author
Mercy Grogan
A little-known Victorian writer, Mercy Grogan is best remembered for a practical guide that explored how women could support themselves through work. Her writing speaks to a moment when questions of education, independence, and opportunity were becoming harder to ignore.
1 Audiobook
How Women May Earn a Living
by Mercy Grogan
About the author
Mercy Grogan was a nineteenth-century British author whose best-known book, How Women May Earn a Living (1883), offered practical advice about employment open to women. The book reflects the social changes of its time, when more readers were looking for realistic ways women might gain financial independence.
Reliable biographical details about her are limited. One research database on Victorian authors identifies her as Mercy Mary Grogan, born in 1827, and notes that she also wrote The Roua Pass; or, Englishmen in the Highlands (1857), published under the pseudonym "Erick Mackenzie."
Because so little personal information is firmly documented, her work remains the clearest introduction to her life and interests. What survives suggests a writer engaged with the practical realities facing women in the late Victorian period, and interested in making useful knowledge available to a broad readership.