A fascinating social history of a uniquely British institution.

First published in 1972, Jonathan Gathorne-Hardy's The Rise and Fall of the British Nanny became an instant classic of social history - a groundbreaking study of the golden era of an extraordinary and exclusive British institution. Drawing upon extensive paper research and interviews with former nannies and their charges, Gathorne-Hardy offers 'a study of a unique and curious way of bringing up children, which evolved among the upper and upper-middle-classes during the nineteenth century, flourished for approximately eighty years and then, with the Second World War, vanished for ever.' The nanny hereby earns her place in the story of the British Empire; also in the histories of psychology, child-rearing and British ruling class mores. 'Marvellously researched and beautifully written.' W. H. Auden, Observer 'Enough to delight the sternest critic.' Auberon Waugh, Harpers & Queen

From The New Yorker's most entertaining and acerbic wit comes a controversial reassessment of the rituals and events that shape women's lives: weddings, sex, housekeeping, and motherhood.

Representations of masochism - both overt and oblique - permeate the work of James Joyce. While a number of critics have noted this, to date there has been no sustained and focused analysis of this trope in his writings. David Cotter argues that such an examination is key to understanding the meanings and messages of Joyce's work. Adding further dimensions to moral, political and aesthetic considerations in the novels and stories - particularly Ulysses - this book provides a comprehensive account of masochistic elements in James Joyce's work. Cotter draws upon psychoanalytic theory and social history to illustrate the subversive power of perversity in the literature of the modern period. This edition first Published in 2003. Routledge is an imprint of Taylor & Francis, an informa company.

The Reader's Guide to British History is the essential source to secondary material on British history. This resource contains over 1,000 A-Z entries on the history of Britain, from ancient and Roman Britain to the present day. Each entry lists 6-12 of the best-known books on the subject, then discusses those works in an essay of 800 to 1,000 words prepared by an expert in the field. The essays provide advice on the range and depth of coverage as well as the emphasis and point of view espoused in each publication.

First published in 1986. At any one time in late nineteenth-century England and Wales over one million men and women were described as domestic servants in the occupational category after agricultural work. This title explores several aspects of domestic service in the area of Rochdale, and the servant population is examined to discover who entered the service, at what age, and from what background they came. This title will be of interest to students of history.

Almost three-quarters of a million British soldiers lost their lives during the First World War, and many more were incapacitated by their wounds, leaving behind a generation of women who, raised to see marriage as "the crown and joy of woman's life," suddenly discovered that they were left without an escort to life's great feast. Drawing upon a wealth of moving memoirs, Singled Out tells the inspiring stories of these women: the student weeping for a lost world as the Armistice bells pealed, the socialite who dedicated her life to resurrecting the ancient past after her soldier love was killed, the Bradford mill girl whose campaign to better the lot of the "War spinsters" was to make her a public figure--and many others who, deprived of their traditional roles, reinvented themselves into something better. Tracing their fates, Nicholson shows that these women did indeed harbor secret sadness, and many of them yearned for the comforts forever denied them--physical intimacy, the closeness of a loving relationship, and children. Some just endured, but others challenged the conventions, fought the system, and found fulfillment outside of marriage. From the mill-girl turned activist to the debutante turned archeologist, from the first woman stockbroker to the "business girls" and the Miss Jean Brodies, this book memorializes a generation of young women who were forced, by four of the bloodiest years in human history, to stop depending on men for their income, their identity, and their future happiness. Indeed, Singled Out pays homage to this remarkable generation of women who, changed by war, in turn would change society.

In this pioneering work about the precursor to the comic book, Kelly Boyd traces the evolution of the boys' story paper and its impact on the imaginative world of working-class readers. From the penny dreadful and the Boy's Own Paper to the tales of Billy Bunter and Sexton Blake, this cultural form shaped ideas about gender, race, class and empire in response to social change. This study is an important analysis of a neglected part of popular culture.