The often confused and transgressive relationships between upstairs and downstairs have been a perennial literary subject, but the ways in which they have been depicted have changed significantly over time.
Kristina Straub’s new work, Domestic Affairs: Intimacy, Eroticism, and Violence Between Servants and Masters in Eighteenth-Century Britain, details the differing representations of these relationships in this period, and this week Reviews in History features a discussion of the book between our reviewer Sarah Lloyd and the author.