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Overview: Ivy Compton-Burnett (1892-1969) wrote over fifteen novels about the upper classes of the late Victorian period. The novels are constructed almost entirely of seemingly banal dialogue that eventually reveals, beneath its surface, the truths of human nature and insights into human relationships which Compton-Burnett took as her themes.
Genre: Fiction > General Fiction/Classics
Book #1 – A House and Its Head
Ivy Compton-Burnett’s mordantly funny, unsparing dissection of the patriarchal family, back in print with an introduction by Hilary Mantel
It is Christmas Day, 1885, and the Edgeworths are at each other’s throats again. Duncan holds his wife and children captive to his authoritarian whims; every day brings fresh struggles for power. Before breakfast is over, there will be presents in the fire.
When illness strikes the family, volatile tensions are unleashed that result in scandal, adultery and murder, while a crowd of gossiping neighbours watches gleefully on.
A brutally funny demolition of patriarchal authority, A House and Its Head confirms Ivy Compton-Burnett’s status as one of the unique stylists of twentieth-century English fiction, and its greatest chronicler of the violent dysfunction of families.
Book #2 – Manservant and Maidservant
Reissue of a caustically witty story of the tensions and petty tyrannies in a Victorian household from an essential 20th-century novelist
Horace Lamb runs an austere household with tyrannical force and cruel thrift. His five children shiver through the winter and learn that a fire is not a thing to be taken for granted. Hierarchies are more lightly enforced in the servants’ quarters, where Bullivant and Mrs Selden attempt to rein in their young charges. When Horace suddenly turns attentive and caring, the real difficulties begin: the taut order of the household slackens, setting loose old grievances.
Her own favourite among her novels, Manservant and Maidservant is Ivy Compton-Burnett at her witty, lacerating best. A ruthless satire of power struggles and petty economies, it exposes the violence and cruelty at the core of Victorian family life.
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