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 grueling physical labor. 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 Delving into secret diaries; unpublished letters and the neglected service archives of our stately homes; Tessa Boase tells the extraordinary stories of five working women who ran some of Britain's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.
#903079 in Books 2012-09-06Original language:EnglishPDF # 1 11.00 x .81 x 8.50l; 2.20 #File Name: 1770850562144 pages
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