Items25The creator’s order
  1. 1Longbourn (2013)Longbourn (2013) 6.0/10 on Open LibraryPublished 1 Jan 2013A clean gown and a hot meal require somebody else's hands. Baker follows Sarah, a housemaid in the Bennet household, through the physical work that Pride and Prejudice leaves largely outside the drawing room. Her attractions and ambitions matter as much as the family upstairs, while other servants…0
  2. 2The Bookbinder of Jericho (2023)The Bookbinder of Jericho (2023)Published 1 Jan 2023Peggy binds books at Oxford University Press while wanting access to the learning inside them. The First World War changes the workforce and brings new people into a life already shaped by her twin sister and their shared home. Enjoy the details of making a physical book, but notice the different…0i
  3. 3Girl with a Pearl Earring (1999)Girl with a Pearl Earring (1999) 7.2/10 on Open LibraryPublished 1 Jan 1999Griet enters Vermeer's household to do domestic work, then finds that her ability to notice colour and arrangement has another value. The studio offers interest and danger rather than a simple escape from service. Chevalier makes room for household rivalries, shopping and the care required around…0
  4. 4The Remains of the Day (1989)The Remains of the Day (1989) 8.4/10 on Open LibraryPublished 1 Jan 1989Stevens has built an identity around doing a butler's job perfectly. Recalling his service at Darlington Hall, he makes professional restraint sound reasonable even when it conceals a painful failure of judgement. The work has its own hierarchies and satisfactions; the employer's political choices…0
  5. 5The electric Michelangelo (2004)The electric Michelangelo (2004) 8.0/10 on Open LibraryPublished 1 Jan 2004An apprenticeship in Morecambe leads tattoo artist Cy Parks to a business on Coney Island. Hall makes the body a demanding working surface and the seaside entertainment trade a world of skill, commerce and reinvention. The prose is rich and sometimes earthy, with illness, sexual material and…0
  6. 6The Pull of the Stars (2020)The Pull of the Stars (2020) 8.0/10 on Open LibraryPublished 1 Jan 2020Three days in a Dublin maternity ward during the 1918 influenza outbreak make nursing knowledge intensely practical. Julia Power must decide what to do with limited help, while a doctor and an inexperienced volunteer bring different capacities to the room. The intimacy includes affection as well as…0
  7. 7The Confessions of Frannie Langton (2019)The Confessions of Frannie Langton (2019) 6.0/10 on Open LibraryPublished 1 Jan 2019A Jamaican plantation and a London household have both claimed the right to define Frannie. Her account of a murder accusation insists on a life that those labels leave out, including learning, desire and the uses others make of her intelligence. The Gothic mystery is dark, with slavery, racist…0
  8. 8The Mercies (2020)The Mercies (2020)Published 1 Jan 2020After a storm kills the men of Vardø, women must take on the work that keeps their Norwegian community alive. That practical independence becomes threatening to newly arrived authority. The relationship between Maren and the commissioner's wife also exposes differences among women, rather than…0
  9. 9Dressmaker (2000)Dressmaker (2000) 10.0/10 on Open LibraryPublished 1 Jan 2000Tilly returns to a small Australian town with couture skills that people who despise her still badly want. Dressmaking gives an outsider a bargaining position, and Ham enjoys the vanity, rivalry and pleasure that beautiful clothes can generate. The comedy is barbed and becomes a revenge story, with…0i
  10. 10The Tobacco Wives (2022)The Tobacco Wives (2022) 8.0/10 on Open LibraryPublished 1 Jan 2022Maddie's sewing brings her into the homes of tobacco executives' wives, giving her an unusual view of a town dependent on one industry. Producing beautiful gowns is both demanding work and a way of learning which questions wealth prefers not to hear. This is an accessible coming-of-age story with…0