Accommodating 'Mrs. Three-in-One': homemaking, home entertaining and domestic advice literature in post-war Britain

Abstract

Disregard for the sources through which domestic knowledge has been communicated has contributed to the marginalisation of women's domestic practices from the historical record. Recent work in social and cultural history and cultural studies has reassessed the significance of the everyday and domesticity and an increasing body of work has examined the media through which ideas about lifestyles are communicated. This article contributes to these currents of inquiry an original critique of how domestic advice literature sought to provide solutions to the servant problem in the years following the Second World War.