Labours lost : domestic service and the making of modern England / Carolyn Steedman.

Format:

Book

Author/Creator:

Steedman, Carolyn.

Language:

English

Subjects (All):

Household employees--Great Britain--History--18th century.

Household employees.

Country homes--Great Britain--History--18th century.

Country homes.

History.

Great Britain--Social life and customs--18th century.

Great Britain.

Manners and customs.

Physical Description:

xvi, 410 pages : illustrations ; 24 cm

Place of Publication:

Cambridge, UK ; New York : Cambridge University Press, 2009.

Summary:

"This is a unique account of the hidden history of servants and their employers in late eighteenth-century England and of how servants thought about and articulated their resentments. It is a book which encompasses state formation and the maidservant pounding away at dirty nappies in the back kitchen; taxes on the servant's labour and the knives he cleaned, the water he fetched, and the privy he shovelled out. Carolyn Steedman shows how deeply entwined all of these entities, objects and people were in the imagination of those doing the shovelling and pounding and in the political philosophies that attempted to make sense of it all. Rather than fitting domestic service into conventional narratives of industrial revolution' or the making of the English working class' she offers instead a profound re-reading of this formative period in English social history which restores the servants' lost labours to their rightful place"--Provided by publisher.

Notes:

Includes bibliographical references and index.

ISBN:

9780521516372

0521516374

OCLC:

318872043

Online:

Cover image