Here is the first major study of domestic service in France from the late seventeenth century to the early nineteenth century, describing its transformation from a male-oriented occupation, aristocratic in style and often geared to public display, to one that was female, middle-class, and centered on the household. Originally published in 1984. The Princeton Legacy Library uses the latest print-on-demand technology to again make available previously out-of-print books from the distinguished backlist of Princeton University Press. These editions preserve the original texts of these important books while presenting them in durable paperback and hardcover editions. The goal of the Princeton Legacy Library is to vastly increase access to the rich scholarly heritage found in the thousands of books published by Princeton University Press since its founding in 1905.

Originally published in 1983. This book cuts across the class boundaries of traditionally separate fields of social history. It investigates the social origins of servants, their incomes, their marriage and family patterns, their career patterns, their possibilities for social mobility, their political activities, and their criminality. But it also investigates the history of the family and domestic life in France in the sixteenth, seventeenth, and eighteenth centuries, for servants were, at least until the rise of the affectionate nuclear family in the middle of the eighteenth century, considered part of the families of those they served. Finally, this book is also an essay on the history of social relationships in the ancien régime, not only those between masters and servants but also the broader relationships between the ruling elite and the lower classes. The introduction gives basic facts about the composition of households during the Old Regime and explores the attitudes and assumptions that underlay the employment of servants. It also shows how both these attitudes and the households themselves changed dramatically in the last decades before the French Revolution. Part 1 is devoted to the servants themselves. One chapter deals with their lives within their employers' households: their work, their living conditions, their socializing and leisure-time activities. A second examines their private lives: their social origins, marriage and family patterns, their moneymaking and their criminality. And a third explores their relationships with and attitudes toward their masters. In part 2, the focus shifts to an examination of master–servant relationships from the masters' point of view. The first chapter deals with master–servant relationships in general by discussing the factors that determined how employers treated their domestics. The second and third chapters explore two special relationships: masters' sexual relationships with their servants and their relationships with the servants who cared for them in childhood. The epilogue traces the impact of the French Revolution on domestic service and sketches some of the changes in the household that were to come in the nineteenth century.

Menials argues that British writers of the long-eighteenth century projected their era’s economic and social anxieties onto domestic servants. Confronting the emergence of controversial principles like self-interest, emulation, and luxury, writers from Eliza Haywood, Daniel Defoe, and Samuel Richardson to Mary Shelley, Charles Dickens, and William Thackeray used literary servants to critique what they saw as problematic economic and social practices. A cultural history of economic ideology as well as a literary history of domestic service, Menials traces the role of the domestic servant as a representation of the relationship between the master’s ideal self and the cultural forces that threaten it.

• This book explores a complex historical background to fully contextualise the development of the early Gothic mode and the servant character’s role as a speaking and performing figure in literature. • This book includes a comprehensive engagement with a wide range of source texts, unpacking the theoretical elements of the Gothic mode through close-readings of individual works. • This book brings together readings of novels, plays, and adaptations (both contemporary and modern) to construct a full picture of the literary and cultural forces that shaped the literary servant’s role and the Gothic mode’s identity. • This book addresses a critically important yet much underrepresented area of Gothic studies by examining servant characters and their use of narrative.

The dual themes of this volume are the characteristics of patronage relationships and their political uses in early modern France. The first essays provide an overview of the scholarly literature and suggest that the obligatory reciprocity of the patron-client exchange was a defining characteristic. The third and fourth essays compare patronage relationships with kinship and friendship, while the following two focus on the patronage role of noblewomen. Professor Kettering then looks at the role of brokerage in state formation in early modern France, comparing this with other early modern societies. In the final section she explores the role of patronage in the religious wars of the late 16th century and in the civil war of the Fronde a half century later, and the ways in which it was affected by the changing lifestyles of the great nobles during the late 17th century.

This acclaimed translation of Michel Delon's Dictionnaire Europen des Lumires contains more than 350 signed entries covering the art, economics, science, history, philosophy, and religion of the Enlightenment. Delon's team of more than 200 experts from around the world offers a unique perspective on the period, providing offering not only factual information but also critical opinions that give the reader a deeper level of understanding. An international team of translators, editors, and advisers, under the auspices of the French Ministry of Culture, has brought this collection of scholarship to the English-speaking world for the first time.