Common People: The History of an English Family (2014) was shortlisted for the Samuel Johnson (now Baillie Gifford) prize.
She worked as a school teacher, a cleaner, a researcher for the National Association for Gifted Children, and as a studio manager at the BBC, before taking an M.A.
[citation needed] Her first academic article on romance fiction in 1984 helped open up the field of British popular culture to serious study and has been much anthologised.
It argued that it was impossible to understand ideas about English character in the period, or the changes within literary culture, without recognising the extent to which the female population represented the nation between the wars.
[4] Light also donated materials relating to Samuel's mother, the composer and Communist activist Minna Keal (1909–99).
[6][7][8] In 2003 she was given a personal Visiting Professorship at the University of East London and from 2006 to 2009 was appointed a Research Professor (part-time) attached to the History Centre, based in the School of Cultural and Media Studies.
[11] She is currently the co-editor of a series for Edinburgh University Press, The Feminist Library, which launched with her own volume, 'Inside History: From Popular Fiction to Life-writing'.