Servants: A Downstairs History of Britain from the Nineteenth Century to Modern Times
Lucy Lethbridge
(Author)
Description
From the immense staff running a lavish Edwardian estate to the lonely maid-of-all-work cooking in a cramped middle-class house, domestics were an essential yet unobtrusive part of the British hierarchy for much of the past century, required to tread softly and blend into the background. Lucy Lethbridge's Servants gives them a voice in this discerning portrait of the complex relationship between the server, the served, and the world they lived in, opening a window on British society from the Edwardian period to the present.
Product Details
Price
$16.95
$15.76
Publisher
W. W. Norton & Company
Publish Date
November 17, 2014
Pages
416
Dimensions
5.4 X 8.2 X 1.0 inches | 0.75 pounds
Language
English
Type
Paperback
EAN/UPC
9780393349801
BISAC Categories:
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About the Author
Lucy Lethbridge is the author of the highly praised Servants: A Downstairs History of Britain from the Nineteenth Century to Modern Times and Mind Your Manors: Tried-and-True British Household Cleaning Tips. She lives in London.
Reviews
In this excellent addition to the history of domestic service in the 20th century, Lucy Lethbridge has swept the existing archive and added new sources of her own. The result is a richly textured account of what it felt like to spend the decades of high modernity on your knees with a dustpan and brush.
Lucy Lethbridge turns servants into stars, offering a colorful and compelling social history about the men, women, and children whose occupation rendered them invisible. Buoyed by substantial research, engaging anecdotes, and a lively narrative, the book places generations of overlooked domestics center stage, where, finally, they receive the attention they have always deserved.--Deborah Davis, author of Strapless and Gilded
A lively and complicating account of British social history seen through the eyes of the workers who made it possible.--Andrea DenHoed
Absorbing history, much of it in the words of servants...[Lethbridge's] subject is many-branched and full of pressing issues.
Thorough and vastly entertaining...[Lethbridge's] style is elegant, detached and slyly witty...Richly complex and enjoyable.--Sue Gaisford
Lethbridge writes with sympathy about her subject.... Evenhanded to the end, [she] stresses the inherent dignity of domestic service.--Matthew Price
Vivid...Household service provides Lethbridge with a window into almost every corner of social history.
Spirited...Lethbridge's book rings with the voices of those on both sides of the divide between upstairs and downstairs.--Kate Tuttle
Lucy Lethbridge turns servants into stars, offering a colorful and compelling social history about the men, women, and children whose occupation rendered them invisible. Buoyed by substantial research, engaging anecdotes, and a lively narrative, the book places generations of overlooked domestics center stage, where, finally, they receive the attention they have always deserved.--Deborah Davis, author of Strapless and Gilded
A lively and complicating account of British social history seen through the eyes of the workers who made it possible.--Andrea DenHoed
Absorbing history, much of it in the words of servants...[Lethbridge's] subject is many-branched and full of pressing issues.
Thorough and vastly entertaining...[Lethbridge's] style is elegant, detached and slyly witty...Richly complex and enjoyable.--Sue Gaisford
Lethbridge writes with sympathy about her subject.... Evenhanded to the end, [she] stresses the inherent dignity of domestic service.--Matthew Price
Vivid...Household service provides Lethbridge with a window into almost every corner of social history.
Spirited...Lethbridge's book rings with the voices of those on both sides of the divide between upstairs and downstairs.--Kate Tuttle
