The Caseroom

SHORTLISTED FOR THE 2017 SALTIRE FIRST BOOK AWARD Kate Hunter is a debut author with a compelling new novel that examines a little explored period in Scottish history: Edinburgh's print industry in the late-nineteenth century, a volatile time of significant change. In The Caseroom , Edinburgh is at the heart of Britain's print industry with St Leonards and Canonmills ringing with the clamour of print works. Determined to follow her father and older brothers into the print trade, Iza Ross enters the caseroom of Ballantynes Pauls works in Causewayside as a callow thirteen-year old. Set in the thick of workers lives in Edinburgh's thriving print industry, The Caseroom follows Iza into the arcane world of the caseroom where she learns the intricacies of the highly-skilled trade of hand typesetting, work that had been, and was to become once more, a male preserve. Despite hostility to the cheap labour that women represent, Iza persists in work that allows her to feed her imagination on books. But holding on to her trade means hardening herself to the needs of those she loves. And when the men's union moves to eliminate women from the caseroom and a We Women movement forms to oppose them, there is no middle ground. Torn between class and gender loyalties and embroiled in a bitter labour dispute, Iza must choose sides.