Changes

|title=Below Stairs: The Bestselling Memoirs of a 1920s Kitchen Maid

|author=Margaret Powell

|reviewer=Trish Simpson-Davis

|buy=Yes

|borrow=Yes

|pages=288

|publisher=Pan

|date=March 2011

|isbn=978-0330535380

}}

''Below Stairs'' was first published in 1968, and it's no exaggeration to claim Margaret Powell as the trailblazer for the memoir genre. This book encouraged hundreds of autobiographies of common life, and spawned a whole generation of tv programmes. In its vernacular and popularist way, it was probably as influential as Mayhew's 'London Labour and the London Poor'. Before her, only famous people wrote their stories, and that without too much regard for reality. Unless they were literary writers, achievements were downplayed and emotions hidden away, in the stilted style of the British stiff upper lip. Not so Margaret Powell, who became a publishing sensation when she blasted through with a robust Voice rather than a polished narrative, in the first-ever tale of an ordinary servant writing about everyday life below stairs. Imagine being talent-spotted from an evening class and invited to write your memoir: those were the days!

Bookbag reviewers also enjoyed [[1923: A Memoir by Harry Leslie Smith]] and Nella Last's extraordinary diaries, eg [[Nella Last's Peace: The Post-war Diaries of Housewife 49 by Patricia Malcolmson (Editor), Robert Malcolmson (Editor)|Nella Last's Peace]] edited by Robert and Patricia Malcomson. Today's authors are now publishing records of the Fifties on: I particularly liked Jennifer Worth's [[Farewell To The East End by Jennifer Worth|Farewell to the East End]] and [[Shadows Of The Workhouse: The Drama Of Life In Postwar London by Jennifer Worth|Shadows of the Workhouse]].

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