Maid as Muse


Book Description

A startlingly original work establishing the impact of domestic servants on the life and writings of Emily Dickinson




The House Servant's Directory, Or, A Monitor for Private Families


Book Description

An annotated introduction exploring the contemporary importance of the book "The House Servants Directory", the identity and character of the author, and its significance in American history.




Swift: The Man, his Works, and the Age


Book Description

First published in 1983, Dean Swift is the concluding book in a series of three volumes providing a detailed exploration of the events of Swift’s life. The third volume follows Swift’s life and career from 1714 to 1745 and sets it against the public events of the age, paying close attention to political and economic change, ecclesiastical problems, social issues, and literary history. It traces Swift’s rise to becoming first citizen of Ireland and looks in detail at the composition, publication, and reception of Gulliver’s Travels, as well as many of Swift’s other works, both poetry and prose. It also explores Swift’s later years, his love affairs with Esther Johnson and Esther Vanhomrigh, his complicated friendships with Pope, Lord Bolingbroke, and Archbishop King, and his declining health. Dean Swift is a hugely detailed insight into Swift’s life from 1714 until his death and will be of interest to anyone wanting to find out more about his life and works.




The Complete Servant


Book Description




Leading from the Middle


Book Description

The definitive playbook for driving impact as a middle manager Leading from the Middle: A Playbook for Managers to Influence Up, Down, and Across the Organization delivers an insightful and practical guide for the backbone of an organization: those who have a boss and are a boss and must lead from the messy middle. Accomplished author and former P&G executive Scott Mautz walks readers through the unique challenges facing these managers, and the mindset and skillset necessary for managing up and down and influencing what happens across the organization. You’ll learn the winning mindset of the best middle managers, how to develop the most important skills necessary for managing from the middle, how to create your personal Middle Action Plan (MAP), and effectively influence: Up the chain of command, to your boss and those above them Down, to your direct reports and teams who report to you Laterally, to peers and teams you have no formal authority over Anyone in an organization who reports to someone and has someone reporting to them must lead from the middle. They are the most important group in an organization and have a unique opportunity to drive impact. Leading from the Middle explains how.







Cultures of Servitude


Book Description

Domestic servitude blurs the divide between family and work, affection and duty, the home and the world. In Cultures of Servitude, Raka Ray and Seemin Qayum offer an ethnographic account of domestic life and servitude in contemporary Kolkata, India, with a concluding comparison with New York City. Focused on employers as well as servants, men as well as women, across multiple generations, they examine the practices and meaning of servitude around the home and in the public sphere. This book shifts the conversations surrounding domestic service away from an emphasis on the crisis of transnational care work to one about the constitution of class. It reveals how employers position themselves as middle and upper classes through evolving methods of servant and home management, even as servants grapple with the challenges of class and cultural distinction embedded in relations of domination and inequality.




Directions to Servants


Book Description

Directions to Servants is one of Jonathan Swift’s last completed works. It displays all his caustic skill as a satirist and his unerring eye for the little annoyances of life. Taking the form of a handbook of manners, and addressed to each servant individually, Directions to Servants is the ultimate upstairs/downstairs battle. With scathing wit, Swift pits master against servant in an endless struggle for order, frugality, and the best bits of the roast. His servants are lazy, profligate, and acquisitive—always on the lookout for a shilling to be made on the sale of leftovers, or a half-bottle of wine to share with the cook. Written in Swift’s final years of sanity, Directions to Servants is a last hilarious outpouring of cynicism at a lifetime’s accumulation of poor service. Irish clergyman and satirist Jonathan Swift is best remembered for his philosophical parody Gulliver’s Travels.




The Works...


Book Description