“Our humble words have gone over the seas”

This chapter examines the transatlantic context of The Lowell Offering (1840–1845), a monthly periodical containing fiction and poetry written by the Lowell factory girls in Massachusetts. The history of the Offering reveals both the sustained attention to the factory girls’ writing in the United States and Great Britain and the call-and-response nature of the Offering’s international presence. Issues of The Lowell Offering made their way to England via travelers and international subscriptions where they were read and reviewed in the popular press. Throughout the 1840s and 1850s, English writers and readers saw the Offering and the operatives who wrote for it as examples—albeit idealized ones—of what English factories and factory operatives could be—even as tensions over American factory conditions and working hours, including those in Lowell, were increasing.