Mrs Woolf and the Servants
Published on 7. August 2008
Book
Paperback/Softback
400 pages
978-0-14-025410-5 (ISBN)
Description
Virginia Woolf was a feminist and a bohemian but without her servants - cooking, cleaning and keeping house - she might never have managed to write.
Mrs Woolf and The Servants explores the hidden history of service. Through Virginia Woolf's extensive diaries and letters and brilliant detective work, Alison Light chronicles the lives of those forgotten women who worked behind the scenes in Bloomsbury, and their fraught relations with one of the twentieth century's greatest writers.
Mrs Woolf and The Servants explores the hidden history of service. Through Virginia Woolf's extensive diaries and letters and brilliant detective work, Alison Light chronicles the lives of those forgotten women who worked behind the scenes in Bloomsbury, and their fraught relations with one of the twentieth century's greatest writers.
Reviews / Votes
Fascinating, beautifully written and meticulously researched * Literary Review * An absorbing investigation, serious, radical and feminist in its politics, entertaining in its delivery * The Independent * Offers us an invaluable glimpse into the hidden history of domestic service in an absorbing narrative, beautifully written with the sensibility of a poet * The Times * A compelling portrait of how rich and poor women of this time were locked into a strange and pernicious symbiosis, and a vital warning against social inequality * Telegraph * An absorbing investigation, serious, radical and feminist in its politics, entertaining in its delivery * The Independent *More details
Language
English
Place of publication
London
United Kingdom
Product notice
Paperback (UK-B)
Illustrations
integrated b&w illustrations
Dimensions
Height: 198 mm
Width: 129 mm
Thickness: 24 mm
Weight
477 gr
ISBN-13
978-0-14-025410-5 (9780140254105)
Copyright in bibliographic data and cover images is held by Nielsen Book Services Limited or by the publishers or by their respective licensors: all rights reserved.
Schweitzer Classification
Other editions
Additional editions
E-Book
08/2007
1st Edition
Penguin Books Ltd
€10.99
Available for download
Person
Alison Light is the author of Forever England: Femininity, Literature and Conservatism between the Wars and edited Virginia Woolf's Flush for Penguin Classics. She has worked at the BBC and lectured at London University. She is currently a part-time Professor at the Raphael Samuel History Centre in the University of East London and also teaches in the School of English at the University of Newcastle-upon-Tyne. She is a contributor to the London Review of Books. Her grandmother worked as a domestic servant.