Mrs Woolf and the Servants - Hardcover

Light, Alison

Hardcover

ISBN 10: 0670867179 ISBN 13: 9780670867172

Publisher: Fig Tree, 2007

Synopsis

Loathing, anger, shame – and deep affection: Virginia Woolf’s relationship with her servants was central to her life. Like thousands of her fellow Britons she relied on live-in domestics for the most intimate of daily tasks. Her cook and parlour maid relieved her of the burden of housework and without them she might never have become a writer. But unlike many of her contemporaries Virginia Woolf was frequently tormented by her dependence on servants. Uniquely, she explored her violent, often vicious, feelings in her diaries, novels and essays. What, the reader might well wonder, was it like for the servants to live with a mistress who so hated giving her orders, and who could be generous and hostile by turns?Through the prism of the writer’s life and work, Alison Light explores the volatile, emotional territory which is the hidden history of domestic service. Compared to most employers in Britain between the wars, Leonard and Virginia Woolf were free and easy. Life in the Bloomsbury circle of writers and artists was often fun. Yet despite being liberal in outlook, these were also households where the differences in upbringing and education were acute: employers and servants were still ‘us’ and ‘them’. The women who worked for the Woolfs, like other domestic servants, have usually been relegated to the margins of history, yet unearthing their lives reveals fascinating stories: of Sophie Farrell, the Victorian cook and ‘family treasure’, who ended her days in a London bed-sit; Lottie Hope, the parlour maid, a foundling, who’d been left on a doorstep like a parcel; and Nellie Boxall, the Woolfs’ cook, who was finally dismissed after sixteen years of rows and reconciliations, only to find herself a more glamorous job. Mrs Woolf and the Servants is a riveting and highly original study of one of Britain’s greatest literary modernists. Ultimately, though, it is also a moving and eloquent testimony to the ways in which individual creativity always needs the support of others.

About this title

Review:

"[Light's] analyses of both the Bloomsbury notables and the servant class of their time are deft and engrossing." "--Publishers Weekly "

"The complex, interwoven stories of Woolf and Sophie, Nellie, Lottie, Louie, and many other distinct personalities remain at the heart of this meticulously researched and elegant exploration." "--Booklist"

"Eye-opening... Light enriches the history of Bloomsbury by adding to it the stories of Nellie, Lottie and the other women and men whose manual labor sustained it." "--Chicago Tribune"

"Ms Light has done an excellent job of weaving together social history and literary criticism. Her book not only gives voice to previously silent subjects but also adds to our understanding of both Woolf and Bell, of whom it is sometimes easy to feel one has heard quite enough already." "--Economist"

"Light's research is thorough and she does a good job of joining social history to Woolf's particular story." "--Christian Science Monitor"

"This is a book with a most revelatory subject ... it is original, and that is a lot.""--Boston Globe"

"Light deftly 'restores the servants to the story.'" "--New Yorker"

"Historian Alison Light's fascinating "Mrs. Woolf and the Servants: An Intimate History of Domestic Life in Bloomsbury" does something that by all rights should be impossible: The book finds a fresh angle on a life so well-documented it should by all rights be threadbare. Light writes with sympathy and insight, blowing away the cobwebs of a way of life now gone." "--Seattle Times"

"The largely untold stories of the live-in servants who eased, enriched, complicated and frustrated the domestic tranquility of Virginia Woolf and others in hercircle. Light brings all her scholarly skills and imagination to bear on the task of illuminating the lives of people whom history has often ignored. Reading Woolf's diaries and letters, the author was surprised by the emotional, often negative energy the novelist invested in her servants. This sent Light back into the fiction--she spends some time discussing the roles of servants in Woolf's novels--and into family and public records, where she discovered a surprising amount of material on the people who served the writer from cradle to grave. ... Although Light is most interested in humanizing the servants, she also offers heavy but digestible sections of social history and literary criticism. We learn about the rise and fall of domestic service, and the author contrasts Woolf's liberalism in her fiction with her class-consciousness in her kitchen... [A] groundbreaking work of scholarship. An essential addition to the alpine pile of books about Woolf." "--Kirkus"

"Superbly researched, often passionately eloquent, and enthralling throughout...Light's signal achievement in her compelling book lies in divvying up her pages equally between the lives of the servants and that of their mistress. Mrs. Woolf and the Servants is no dryly academic sociological study. It is an inquiry into the fundamental nature of human intimacy." "--Washington Post Book World"

"Ms. Light's aim is 'to give the servants back their dignity and the respect they deserve.' She succeeds wonderfully. Ms. Light is able to broach matters of class and mutual dependency, of Woolf's artistic vision and inherited blinders, with a graceful judiciousness." "--Wall Street Journal"

"Eye-opening... Light enriches the history of Bloomsbury by adding to it the stories of Nellie, Lottie and the other women and men whose manual labor sustained it." "--Chicago Tribune"

"[Light's] analyses of both the Bloomsbury notables and the servant class of their time are deft and engrossing." "--Publishers Weekly "

"The complex, interwoven stories of Woolf and Sophie, Nellie, Lottie, Louie, and many other distinct personalities remain at the heart of this meticulously researched and elegant exploration." "--Booklist"

"Ms Light has done an excellent job of weaving together social history and literary criticism. Her book not only gives voice to previously silent subjects but also adds to our understanding of both Woolf and Bell, of whom it is sometimes easy to feel one has heard quite enough already." "--Economist"

"Light's research is thorough and she does a good job of joining social history to Woolf's particular story." "--Christian Science Monitor"

"This is a book with a mostrevelatory subject ... it is original, and that is a lot.""--Boston Globe"

"Light deftly 'restores the servants to the story.'" "--New Yorker"

"Historian Alison Light's fascinating "Mrs. Woolf and the Servants: An Intimate History of Domestic Life in Bloomsbury" does something that by all rights should be impossible: The book finds a fresh angle on a life so well-documented it should by all rights be threadbare. Light writes with sympathy and insight, blowing away the cobwebs of a way of life now gone." "--Seattle Times"

"The largely untold stories of the live-in servants who eased, enriched, complicated and frustrated the domestic tranquility of Virginia Woolf and others in her circle. Light brings all her scholarly skills and imagination to bear on the task of illuminating the lives of people whom history has often ignored. Reading Woolf's diaries and letters, the author was surprised by the emotional, often negative energy the novelist invested in her servants. This sent Light back into the fiction--she spends some time discussing the roles of servants in Woolf's novels--and into family and public records, where she discovered a surprising amount of material on the people who served the writer from cradle to grave. ... Although Light is most interested in humanizing the servants, she also offers heavy but digestible sections of social history and literary criticism. We learn about the rise and fall of domestic service, and the author contrasts Woolf's liberalism in her fiction with her class-consciousness in her kitchen... [A] groundbreaking work of scholarship. An essential addition to the alpine pile of books about Woolf." "--Kirkus ""A mix of social history, biography andliterary criticism, Alison Light takes a sustained look at these servants and their relationships with their artistic, semibohemian, upper-middle-class employers. Light digs deeper into Woolf's experience with servants and pieces together the servants' stories--a method that allows her to examine, from fresh angles, the institution of domestic servitude. An absorbing collective history of servants in Britain...""--The Nation" "An authoritative, detailed account of the dynamic relationship between Virginia Woolf and the domestic help that was so crucial to her existence as a woman and a writer. Alison Light is clear-eyed and wise about her chosen topic. She has not only done her research, but brings to her task some unique advantages: Her grandmother was in domestic service. And indeed a particular feature of "Mrs. Woolf and the Servants" is its emphasis on the humanity of these women. Although well-versed in and informed by the sociological background, Ms. Light is careful to present rounded portraits of these people who played such an important role in the Woolf household.""--Washington Times"

“This is a bold, impressive and important rewriting of a slice of British social history.”—"Guardian

"“An absorbing and complex portrait of Woolf’s particular relation to domestics and domesticity, but also an analysis of the shifting mores of the period.”—"New York Times Book Review

"“Eye-opening... Light enriches the history of Bloomsbury by adding to it the stories of Nellie, Lottie and the other women and men whose manual labor sustained it.”—"Chicago Tribune"

"This is a bold, impressive and important rewriting of a slice of British social history."--"Guardian

""An absorbing and complex portrait of Woolf's particular relation to domestics and domesticity, but also an analysis of the shifting mores of the period."--"New York Times Book Review

""Eye-opening... Light enriches the history of Bloomsbury by adding to it the stories of Nellie, Lottie and the other women and men whose manual labor sustained it."--"Chicago Tribune"

This is a bold, impressive and important rewriting of a slice of British social history. "Guardian"

An absorbing and complex portrait of Woolf's particular relation to domestics and domesticity, but also an analysis of the shifting mores of the period. "New York Times Book Review"

Eye-opening Light enriches the history of Bloomsbury by adding to it the stories of Nellie, Lottie and the other women and men whose manual labor sustained it. "Chicago Tribune""

From the Back Cover:

`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

`Compelling' Telegraph

`Illuminating' Harper's Bazaar

`Fascinating, beautifully written and meticulously researched' Literary
Review

`Light has uncovered material that is fascinating and important, both in
itself and for what it tells us about Bloomsbury and domestic service...an
absorbing investigation, serious, radical and feminist in its politics,
entertaining in its delivery' The Independent

About this edition

• Publisher: Fig Tree
• Publication date: 2007
• ISBN 10: 0670867179
• ISBN 13: 9780670867172
• Binding: Hardcover
• Number of pages: 400