Longbourn (Jo Baker, 2013)
The same years at the Bennets’ house, told by the housemaid who washes their clothes.
The Bennets’ house had servants doing the work while the daughters went to balls. Tell the same years from below stairs.
You love the novel and want to see its world from the kitchen.
What it keeps and what it changes
Keeps: the Bennet household and the novel’s events, offstage.
Changes: the point of view, entirely. Sarah, an orphaned housemaid, and a new footman are at the center; the family’s romances happen upstairs.
Sarah, an orphaned housemaid at Longbourn, and a new footman whose arrival unsettles the house.
Whose story is it?
the servants’: Sarah, the housemaid, and the new footman.
How much time does it ask?
352 pages in paperback.
Vintage paperback, 17 June 2014, 352 pages.
Where to find it
Buy the paperback — Bookshop.org
Other ways to get it: Paperback — Amazon · Ebook — Kobo · Kindle — Amazon
Borrow it free: Borrow on Libby · Find at your library — WorldCat
More ways into Longbourn: Penguin Classics, ed. Vivien Jones (2002) · The Oxford World’s Classics edition (2020) · The Norton Critical Edition, fourth edition