This book suggests alternative ways of looking at what made a writer, what people gained from writing, and explores the alternative world of temperance periodicals of the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. It introduces some of the now-forgotten writers who, in their thousands, kept the Victorian periodical presses rolling, and the public entertained.

Locating their writing in the context of their personal commitment, the study takes seven prolific writers who were outside what we now think of as the circuits of conventional publication and authorship, and looks at how they found ways to make their voices heard. Their absorption in a cause led them to forge impressive writing careers in a variety of genres and media, focusing around high-circulation temperance periodicals.

Examining their cultural contributions as well as their professional lives confirms the importance of the temperance movement in the second half of the nineteenth century, and raises questions about distribution practices and values, and distinctions between "life" and "work. ".