The Housekeeper's Tale. The Women Who Really Ran the English Country House

Boase, Tessa

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Language: English

Published by Aurum Press Ltd, London, 2014

1781310432 / 9781781310434

  • First Edition
  • Signed
  • Hardcover
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Seller: The Print Room, Cockernhoe nr Luton, United KingdomThe Print Room

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Condition: Used - Fine

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First edition, first impression with full number line. SIGNED BY THE AUTHOR, IN BLACK INK, WITHOUT DEDICATION, ON TITLE PAGE. Some very slight edge wear to top of jacket and spine, top corners very slightly bruised, not price clipped (£20.00), no other inscriptions, internally clean tight and square, overall a vg++ copy, looks unread. 314pp, illustrated. Working as a housekeeper was one of the most prestigious jobs a nineteenth and early twentieth century woman could want, and also one of the toughest. A far cry from the Downton Abbey fiction, the real life Mrs Hughes was up against capricious mistresses, low pay, no job security and gruelling physical labour. Until now, her story has never been told. 'The Housekeeper's Tale' reveals the personal sacrifices, bitter disputes and driving ambition that shaped these women's careers. Delving into secret diaries, unpublished letters and the neglected service archives of our stately homes, Tessa Boase tells the extraordinary stories of five working women who ran some of Britain's most prominent households. There is Dorothy Doar, Regency housekeeper for the obscenely wealthy 1st Duke and Duchess of Sutherland at Trentham Hall, Staffordshire. There is Sarah Wells, a deaf and elderly Victorian in charge of Uppark, West Sussex. Ellen Penketh is Edwardian cook housekeeper at the sociable but impecunious Erddig Hall in the Welsh borders. Hannah Mackenzie runs Wrest Park in Bedfordshire, Britain¿s first country house war hospital, bankrolled by playwright J. M. Barrie. And there is Grace Higgens, cook housekeeper to the Bloomsbury set at Charleston farmhouse in East Sussex for half a century, an era defined by the Second World War. Revelatory, gripping and unexpectedly poignant, 'The Housekeeper's Tale' champions the invisible women who ran the English country house. Scarce signed.

Seller Inventory # 005824

Title
The Housekeeper's Tale. The Women Who Really Ran the English Country House
Author
Boase, Tessa
Publisher
Aurum Press Ltd, London
Publication year
2014
Condition
Fine
Dust jacket
Fine
Signed
Signed by Author(s)
Binding
Hardcover
Language
English
ISBN 10
1781310432
ISBN 13
9781781310434
Illustrator
Jacket by Joanna MacGregor
Edition
1st Edition
Printing
1st Printing
Dimensions
8vo - over 7¾ - 9¾" tall

The Print Room

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