 She worked initially as a weaver and then as a dresser, and by 1840 she had saved enough money to make a deposit on the house which her parents and siblings were living in.Bagley was dissatisfied with working conditions however and published one of her first pieces of writing, “Pleasures of Factory Life”, in an 1840 issue of the "Lowell Offering", a literary magazine written, edited, and published by working women.These "pleasures", she wrote, were like angels' visits