Below Stairs [FIRST "CHEAP" EDITION]

(Literature) SIDGWICK, Mrs. Alfred

London: Methuen, 1919. First Thus. Hardcover. 4 3/8 X 6 3/4 Inches. 252 PP. Very Good / Good. Item #8917

SCARCE original 1919 first "cheap" edition of this novel by Cecily Sidgwick. As a fan of Downton Abbey I am always in search of books that might have served as inspiration for Julian Fellowes. While this is not the "Below Stairs" by Margaret Powell that Fellowes has stated was his first introduction to the world of skullery maids and butlers, it does share the same title... It is also a very similar story to Margaret's, albeit fictional and published fifty years prior. A SCARCE BOOK IN COMMERCE. Originally published in 1913, this first "cheap" edition issued in 1919. Original dust jacket glued to boards, hence it's survival... Light toning.

“Below Stairs” (by Cecily Sidgwick) is a quietly incisive novel in which Mrs. Alfred Sidgwick turns her characteristic wit toward the frictions and sympathies that bind Edwardian households together. Rather than focusing on the fashionable drawing rooms above, she slips into the kitchens and corridors where maids, cooks, and butlers negotiate their own hierarchies and hopes, revealing a world as vivid - if not more so - than the one their employers inhabit. With her light touch and amused insight, Sidgwick portrays the servants’ lives not as mere background, but as a parallel society full of small rebellions, sharp observations, and unexpected tenderness, offering a social comedy that gently unsettles the reader’s assumptions about class and agency.

Price: $150.00