Eliza Lowe, with two of her sisters, ran a school for girls, aged between 13 and 18, first in Liverpool, then in Southgate Middlesex. The book covers her life in Whitchurch, Burton on Trent, Everton, Liverpool and finally in Middlesex. It describes her school and investigates the lives of some her pupils, one from the influential Rathbone family and one who became a suffragist. Life in the school is described thanks to extant unpublished letters from pupils. An appendix continues the story of her school after her death when her niece took over and later became Headmistress of one of the early Woodard girls' schools in Bangor.