The diary of Delia : Being a veracious chronicle of the kitchen, with some side-lights on the parlour

Chapter 2: ILLUSTRATIONS

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About This Book

A first-person comic diary by a kitchen servant recounts daily routines, household mishaps, fraught interactions with employers and fellow staff, and the practical struggles of urban domestic life. Written in colloquial dialect, the episodic entries mix farcical incidents and job-hunting episodes with pointed observations about class, gender expectations, and workplace dynamics. Short, vivid scenes balance humor and concrete detail about household tasks, while the narrator’s resilient, outspoken voice ties the chronicle together and reveals the social texture behind parlour appearances.

ILLUSTRATIONS

“‘Dying!’ ses I.”	Frontispiece

	PAGE
“‘Now remimber’ ses Minnie, ‘no gineral housework for you.’”	22

“‘Very well Delia’ ses she. ‘It’s hard on me ... so much trouble.’”	36

“I tuk a bit of paper from Mr. John’s desk, and I penned the following warning in plane litters and langwidge.”	44

“‘Mr. John’ I exclaimed involuntarararily, ‘are you sun struck. What’s the trubble?’ ses I.”	58

“Mr. Wolley cum crorling frum underneath the ortermobile.”	114

“‘Go away John! Go away!’ ses she, ‘you shan’t open the dure.’”	134

“‘But suppose’ ses he, leening a bit nearer, ‘that the litter was not for you.’”	146

THE DIARY OF DELIA