Before “Downton Abbey,” how many of us knew that a butler is responsible for keeping the silverware in good order, that a lady’s maid’s employer always addresses her by her last name only, and that ...

“Here is a fine rubbish heap left by our parents to be swept,” wrote Virginia Woolf in her diary in 1929. She was speaking of what was known as “the servant problem” — the way her generation (Woolf ...

TimesMachine is an exclusive benefit for home delivery and digital subscribers. About the Archive This is a digitized version of an article from The Times’s print archive, before the start of online ...

IT’S the beloved period drama centred around the lives of Victorian-era servants and the aristocrat overlords they gleefully obey. But while Downton Abbey, which released the film ...

As literal a title as “Murderous Maids” is, it by no means tells all in regard to this most compelling psychological drama. Filmmaker Jean-Pierre Denis makes plausible a terrible incident that ...

We owe many popular Christmas traditions to Victorian England, from carols and decorated trees to gift-giving. These cheerful traditions stand in stark contrast with our recognition of the nightmarish ...

Victorian Studies, Vol. 62, No. 2, Papers and Responses from the Seventeenth Annual Conference of the North American Victorian Studies Association (Winter 2020), pp ...

The history of legal restrictions imposed upon Victorian departmental public servants dates from the introduction of responsible government in 1856. This article examines the evolution of Victorian ...