Profession: Siren—The Ambiguous Status of Professional Women Musicians in Eighteenth-Century England

In eighteenth-century England, while music was one of the necessary accomplishments of young women in genteel society, a few female musicians (mainly singers and keyboard players) did practise music in a professional capacity, that is, by deriving an income (and sometimes a very hefty one), as well as a particular status, from their art. The question of this status and of the contemporary representation of female musicians falls therefore naturally within the scope of a study of women's work in eighteenth-century Britain.