This highly original study examines the lives and education of working-class women in nineteenth-century England. Focusing on adult education, the author shows that women's participation cannot be fully understood by concentrating upon the educational field alone. She therefore explores women's lives in employment and in unpaid duties within the family which determined the possiblility of participation in adult classes. The author discusses the influences of society and the family upon formal education provision for working-class women, and she examines the basic schooling for girls which determined the type of adult education they could undertake in later life. `Hard Lessons' is an invaluable reversal of the invisibility of working-class women in the history of the nineteenth-century. Based on intensive research of primary sources, this work raises major questions concerning women in education, such as the value of single-sex education, which are still of relevance today. This work will be of great interest to students and researchers in women's studies, social history and the history of education.