Mrs Woolf & the Servants by Alison Light

My Account
Logout

Create an Evening Standard Account

Use your social network

Save time by using your existing account to sign in to Evening Standard

We'll never share your information or post anything to your account without your permission

Welcome! Sign in here

Use your social network

Save time by using your existing account to sign in to Evening Standard

We'll never share your information or post anything to your account without your permission

Forgot your password ?

Registration

* indicates fields that are mandatory

Email *

Password *

Confirm Password *

First name *

Surname *

Postcode *

Country *

Mobile phone number

Username *

Gender *

Year of birth *

When you sign up...

You will have access to all our online competitions, discounted offers and can post comments on our site.

You will also receive The Weekender newsletter sent every Thursday - it’s full of fantastic offers and ideas for the weekend. You can update your email preferences in your account page when you log in.

Other newsletters and emails

Homes & Property Newsletter - Yes I want to receive the weekly email with all the latest news on property in the capital

Occasionally we would also like to send you relevant emails detailing specific offers either from ourselves or carefully selected partners. If you would prefer not to receive these then please tick the appropriate boxes below. We will never pass on your details.

I do not want to receive additional offers and information from the Evening Standard

I do not want to receive additional offers and information sent by Evening Standard on behalf of carefully selected partners

Terms and Conditions

* I have read, understood and agree to be bound by the terms and conditions of Evening Standard

Registration

Mail Sent for Registration Confirmation.

A confirmation email has been sent. Please activate your account by clicking on the activation link sent in your mail box.

Having grown up taking servants for granted, Virginia Woolf lived through a period when the status of women and relations between the classes underwent significant change. Her attitudes towards her staff exposed her most ugly qualities. Writing about an airraid, she says: "What an irony if they should escape and we be killed." But Woolf also experienced "guilt, pity and rage" about her "general ineptitude" as an employer, and in her fiction, surprisingly reserved some of the tenderest passages for domestic staff. Alison Light's involving, gossipy slice of social history makes clever use of Woolf's diaries and letters to remind us that even forward-thinking intellectuals needed their chamber pots emptying. .

Synopsis by Foyles.co.uk

Virginia Woolf was a feminist and a bohemian but without her servants - cooking, cleaning and keeping house - she might never have managed to write. "Mrs. Woolf and The Servants" explores the hidden history of service. Through Virginia Woolf's extensive diaries and letters and brilliant detective work, Alison Light chronicles the lives of those forgotten women who worked behind the scenes in Bloomsbury, and their fraught relations with one of the twentieth century's greatest writers.