Hannah Cullwick

-
HC wrote seventeen diaries between the years 1854 and 1873, plus numerous letters chronicling in detail her life as a lower servant, as well as her long cross-class courtship and eventual marriage to Arthur Munby . Whether one views her as exceptional or as typical of the one third of women between the ages of fifteen and twenty who were in service at this historical place and time, her writing offers a rare glimpse into the harsh material conditions of maids of all work, as well as the complex cultural intersections of class, gender, race, sexuality, labour, and the body as represented by a working-class woman in later Victorian England.
Cullwick, Hannah. “Introduction and Notes”. The Diaries of Hannah Cullwick, Victorian Maidservant, edited by Liz Stanley, Rutgers University Press, pp. 1 - 28, passim.
4, 8

Milestones

26 May 1833

HC was born at Shifnal in Shropshire.
Cullwick, Hannah. “Introduction and Notes”. The Diaries of Hannah Cullwick, Victorian Maidservant, edited by Liz Stanley, Rutgers University Press, pp. 1 - 28, passim.
2
Blain, Virginia et al., editors. The Feminist Companion to Literature in English: Women Writers from the Middle Ages to the Present. Yale University Press; Batsford.

December 1854

HC wrote her first diary while visiting with her aunt; she produced seventeen in all before ceasing in 1873.
Cullwick, Hannah. “Introduction and Notes”. The Diaries of Hannah Cullwick, Victorian Maidservant, edited by Liz Stanley, Rutgers University Press, pp. 1 - 28, passim.
8, 299

30 September 1873

HC completed her last diary.
Cullwick, Hannah. “Introduction and Notes”. The Diaries of Hannah Cullwick, Victorian Maidservant, edited by Liz Stanley, Rutgers University Press, pp. 1 - 28, passim.
287
Cullwick, Hannah. The Diaries of Hannah Cullwick, Victorian Maidservant. Editor Stanley, Liz, Rutgers University Press.
27

9 July 1909

HC died of heart failure and senile decay at Shifnal in Shropshire.
Cullwick, Hannah. “Introduction and Notes”. The Diaries of Hannah Cullwick, Victorian Maidservant, edited by Liz Stanley, Rutgers University Press, pp. 1 - 28, passim.
2, 6, 302

12 April 1984

Eight of HC 's diaries were published, edited by Liz Stanley .
Blackwell’s Online Bookshop. http://Bookshop.Blackwell.co.uk.
Cullwick, Hannah. “Introduction and Notes”. The Diaries of Hannah Cullwick, Victorian Maidservant, edited by Liz Stanley, Rutgers University Press, pp. 1 - 28, passim.
8

Biography

Some of the people HC served called her this stock name instead of bothering to learn or remember her real one.
Cullwick, Hannah. “Introduction and Notes”. The Diaries of Hannah Cullwick, Victorian Maidservant, edited by Liz Stanley, Rutgers University Press, pp. 1 - 28, passim.
32
HC never went by the name Hannah Munby, although this is the name on her gravestone.
Cullwick, Hannah. “Introduction and Notes”. The Diaries of Hannah Cullwick, Victorian Maidservant, edited by Liz Stanley, Rutgers University Press, pp. 1 - 28, passim.
facing 153