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The House Servant's Directory (Paperback)
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The House Servant's Directory (Paperback)
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Robert Roberts' The House Servant's Directory, first published in
1827 and the standard for household management for decades
afterward, is remarkable for several reasons: It is one of the
first books written by an African American and issued by a
commercial press, and it was written while Roberts (ca. 1780-1860)
was in the employ of Christopher Gore (1758-1827), a former senator
from and governor of Massachusetts (and ancestor of the novelist
Gore Vidal). Gore Place, where Roberts worked from 1825 to 1827, is
one of the grandest neoclassical mansions built in America. Not
only was the extraordinary set of recommendations that Roberts made
about relations between servants and their masters unique for its
time, but his many recipes for cleaning furniture and clothing and
for purchasing, preparing, and serving food and drink for small and
large dinners are also still useful today. As portrayed in Graham
Hodges' introduction, Roberts' own story is a unique window into
the work habits and thoughts of America's domestic workers and into
antebellum African American politics. Of particular note is
Roberts' contribution to the emergence of new self-perceptions of
black manliness. Written at a time when male Americans in general
were reconsidering the construction of masculinity, Roberts' advice
to his fellow servants fostered black dignity for work that few
felt merited respect, and his counsel to employers on proper
treatment of their servants insisted on their humanity and respect
for their skills.
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