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The poetry of Janet Hamilton, the best known working-class woman poet of Scotland in the Victorian age, guides best readers to the less appreciated world of working-class women’s poetry. Hamilton, a self- taught poet and shoemaker’s wife, fought contemporary prejudice against women and working-class people regarding their ability to write poetry. Her poetry shows a deep understanding of the social problems that working-class people, especially women, faced in nineteenth-century English society, such as male sexual irresponsibility, wage disparity between working-class men and women, and rapid industrialization and its negative influences on the human mind. Hamilton is a mild feminist in that her poetry makes a sharp critique of various forms of powers that oppress working-class women. Hamilton attributes a special power to women in educating children, and she emphasizes the importance of self-education of working-class women for such purpose.