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Love & dirt : the marriage of Arthur Munby & Hannah Cullwick

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On 26th May 1854, Arthur Munby met Hannah Cullwick, the day after her 21st birthday.

He was a solicitor, working for the Ecclesiastical Commission, a job he loathed.

She was a servant, a maid of all work. The first encounter marked the beginning of a relationsip which was to endure for more than 50 years.Both of them kept diaries and letters were exchanged throughout their clandestine love affair.

Drawing on these documents, and Munby's photographs of Hannah, all of which catalogue a tale of sexual obsession - Munby adored seeing Hannah "in her dirt" from scrubbing steps and cleaning chimneys and she reciprocated with a literally slavish devotion - Diane Atkinson paints a picture of the wilder shores of Victorian sexuality.

But "Love and Dirt" is much more than that; it is a story of a deep and lasting love between two individuals which breached the barriers of class and intellect that could have divided them and which meant that even after they married they had to keep the relationship hidden from their families and friends.

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Product Details
Macmillan
033378071X / 9780333780718
Hardback
17/01/2003
United Kingdom
English
xviii, 365 p., [8] p. of plates
23 cm
general Learn More
Facsims. on lining papers.