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Mrs Woolf and the Servants: The Hidden Heart of Domestic Service

By: Alison Light
Binding: Hardcover
Publisher: Fig Tree
ISBN: 0670867179
ISBN-13: 9780670867172
Released: 02 Aug 2007
RRP: £20.00
Average Rating:

Customer Reviews

- By: Mrs H, 01 Apr 2008
This is a great, multi-faceted book, glittering with details of Virginia Woolf's class-cluttered mind but also an intimate exploration to home life for rich & poor women throughout the late 19th & early 20th centuries. Provides among other things a thoughtful & thought-provoking look at how individual freedom often depends on the oppression of others: bohemian feminist Virginia Woolf & her lasting work comes to us courtesy of a crack team of wives...
Domestic bliss? - By: Lynette Baines, 26 Dec 2007
This is the story of the relationships between Virginia Woolf & her servants. Woolf's diaries are full of references to the sometimes fraught, sometimes affectionate relationship she had with Nellie Boxalll, Lottie Hope & many other women who cooked, cleaned & looked after Virginia, Leonard & others of the Bloomsbury group. However, as there is often very little information about the servants (it's amazing how much the author has discovered), the book is also a history of domestic service from 1860-1940. This is fascinating. As an avid reader of women's fiction written between the wars, I'm intrigued by these domestic relationships. WWII virtuallly ended the era of live-in servants in British middle-class homes, & the descriptions of poor wages & shocking working conditions here go some way to explaining why women who had experienced the independance of the services refused to go back to someone else's kitchen after the war. As well as being an original look at Woolf from the perspective of the servants, this is essential background for anyone who loves the fiction of Mollie Panter-Downes, E M Delafield or Dorothy Whipple.