Knowing Their Place: Domestic Service in Twentieth-Century Britain - Hardcover

An ambitious study, which corrects a number of easy assumptions... contains wonderful material and much insight. (Alison Light, Times Literary Supplement)

Knowing Their Place is that rare historical monograph that is a pleasure to read from beginning to end. It has the potential to be valuable in different ways at many levels of scholarship: to researchers in the fields of labor history and of womens history, in graduate seminars, and in the undergraduate classroom. (Jamie Bronstein, Journal of British Studies)

[a] richly nuanced account ... excellent (Laura Schwartz, History Workshop Journal)

Delap's book, dense with image and insight, helps us to think about these questions - who cleans, cooks, does the washing and childcare, how much are they paid and valued without turning away. (Sally Alexander, Twentieth Century British History)

Historians have traditionally seen domestic service as an obsolete or redundant sector from the middle of the twentieth century. Knowing Their Place challenges this by linking the early twentieth century employment of maids and cooks to later practices of employing au pairs, mothers' helps, and cleaners. Lucy Delap tells the story of lives and labour within twentieth century British homes, from great houses to suburbs and slums, and charts the interactions of servants and employers along with the intense controversies and emotions they inspired.

Knowing Their Place examines the employment of men and migrant workers, as well as the role of laughter and erotic desire in shaping domestic service. The memory of domestic service and the role of the past in shaping and mediating the present is examined through heritage and televisual sources, from Upstairs, Downstairs toThe 1900 House. Drawing from advice manuals, magazines, novels, cinema, memoirs, feminist tracts, and photographs, this fascinating book will be of particular interest to scholars and students of Modern history, English literature, anthropology, cultural studies, social geography, gender studies, and women's studies. It points to new directions in cultural history through its engagement in innovative areas such as the history of emotions and cultural memory. Through its attention to the contemporary rise in the employment of domestic workers, Knowing Their Place sets 'modern' Britain in a new and compelling historical context.