The Matchgirls' Strike of 1888
A Novel

About this book:

In the choking yellow fog of Bryant & May’s match factory, seventeen-year-old Polly dips wooden splints into vats of white phosphorus—knowing each shift brings her and her ten-year-old sister Clara closer to the "phossy jaw" rotting their coworkers alive. When a teenage girl’s face begins to collapse from the poison, Polly’s quiet endurance ignites into something dangerous: defiance. From the squalid tenements of Bow to the pages of Annie Besant’s newspaper, a spark catches fire.

As hunger sharpens into solidarity, the matchgirls—dismissed as "unorganizable" by union men and factory owners alike—dare to walk out. They face police batons, starvation wages, and the brutal calculus of men who profit from their slow murder. But with every whispered pledge in the weaving room and every headline that shames the nation, Polly and her sisters rewrite what power looks like in Victorian London.

Based on the explosive true strike that shattered the myth of the passive female worker, *The Matchgirls' Strike of 1888* is a blazing testament to the girls who refused to burn silently—and the single promise that changed labor history forever.