Victorian pundits recommended that they be rounded up and shipped overseas. During the Great Depression they were condemned as job-stealers and home-wreckers. Single women have long had an uneasy relationship with the rest of society. In this witty, thoughtful and irresistibly engaging book, Betsy Israel chronicles the ever-changing life of the single woman over the past 150 years. Drawing extensively on primary sources, including private journals, newspaper stories, magazine articles, advertisements, films and television programmes, Bachelor Girl paints an extraordinarily vivid portrait of single women - and the way they were perceived - from the flappers of the Roaring Twenties to the working women of the War years to the 'ballbreaking' career women of the 1980s. The story is brought right up-to-date in a final chapter on modern single icons such as Bridget Jones, Ally McBeal and the Sex and the City gang, who reflect a new generation of single women unafraid to live life on their own terms.