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This lively socio-cultural history examines household service, one of the largest, multi-layered, mobile and most indispensable sectors of employment in early modern England. Drawing on a wide variety of cultural sources including literary depiction and self-representation, this study to brings into sharp focus individual life stories of Britain’s servant class.
Exploring the relationships between servants and between employers and servants; it depicts the differences between patterns of employment in London and the provinces, and the juxtaposition of servant vulnerability and servant ‘power’. This book places new importance on the household servant as a major agent in cultural change and makes a significant contribution to our understanding of servitude in London and the provinces in the two centuries following the Reformation.
An impressive and accessible overview and adds greatly to our understanding of one of the defining features of the early modern era. . . Richardson is especially impressive when applying close textual analysis to drama, literature and contemporary commentary
Southern History, 33 (2011)
Preface
Contents
List if Illustrations
1. Studying household servants
2. The instabilities of representation: household servants in early modern drama
3. Self -representations of servants
4. Employing and serving
5. Housing, diet, dress, welfare, recreation and education
6. Servants, godly households and social engineering
7. Order and disorder in the household
8. The ‘servant problem’
9. Servants and the law
10. Early modern servants in perspective
Bibliography
Index