ABSTRACT
Thomas Hood, whose father was a publisher and whose mother was the daughter of an engraver, was an early Victorian poet who produced works both of a comic vein as well as more serious ballads, novellas, and “social protest” poetry. After numerous projects and a five-year sojourn abroad, Hood earned a place in the public’s affection in decade of 1840s. In 1840 he penned “Miss Kilmansegg and Her Precious Leg,” a savage satirical attack on British philistines for which Leech provided the illustrations. The first easel painting to react to Hood’s poem at precisely this point was by Richard Redgrave, and this canvas helped to seal his own career because of the publicity it——like Hood’s poem——generated. Another painting by Redgrave, which included the seamstress, showing her even younger, was his slightly earlier Going to Service of 1843. Usually teenaged country girls were apprenticed to London dressmakers, thus requiring that they leave their rural origins in order to learn the trade.
