A Footman for the Peacock by Rachel Ferguson

A Footman for the Peacock by Rachel Ferguson

The peacock displayed himself and paraded the lawn, sometimes pausing to look up at the sky.

Waiting? Listening? Guiding. No. Signalling.

Controversial when first published in the early days of World War I, due to its treatment of a loathsome upper-crust family dodging wartime responsibility, A Footman for the Peacock can now be enjoyed as a scathing satire of class abuses, a comic masterpiece falling somewhere between Barbara Pym and Monty Python.

Sir Edmund and Lady Evelyn Roundelay live surrounded by a menagerie of relations and retainers. The Roundelays' history of callous cruelty is literally etched on a window of the servants' quarters with the words Heryn I dye, Thomas Picocke. 1792. Sir Edmund reflects cheerfully on the running footmen who have 'died off like flies' in the family's service.

But now--amidst digressions on everything from family history and servant woes to the villagers' linguistic peculiarities and a song immortalizing the footman's plight--war threatens the Roundelays' smug superiority. What's more, it appears that the estate's peacock is a reincarnation of Thomas Picocke, and may be aiding the Nazi cause . By turns giddy and incisive, hilarious and heartbreaking, A Footman for the Peacock is Rachel Ferguson at her very best. This new edition features an introduction by Elizabeth Crawford.

'The Roundelays are people to live with and laugh at and love' Punch

Ferguson, Rachel: - Rachel Ethelreda Ferguson (1892-1957) was born in Hampton Wick, the youngest of three children. She was educated at home and then sent to a finishing school in Florence, Italy. By the age of 16 she was a fierce campaigner for women's rights and considered herself a suffragette. She went on to become a leading member of the Women's Social and Political Union. In 1911 she became a student at the Royal Academy of Dramatic Art. She began a career on the stage, which was cut short by the advent of World War 1, whereupon Ferguson joined the Women's Volunteer Reserve. She wrote for Punch, and was the drama critic for the Sunday Chronicle, writing under the name 'Columbine'. In 1923 she published her first novel, False Goddesses, which was followed by eleven further novels including A Harp in Lowndes Square (1936), A Footman for the Peacock (1940) and Evenfield (1942), all three of which are now available as Furrowed Middlebrow books. Rachel Ferguson died in Kensington, where she had lived most of her life.

SKU	Unavailable
ISBN 13	9781911413714
ISBN 10	1911413716
Title	A Footman for the Peacock
Author	Rachel Ferguson
Condition	Unavailable
Binding Type	Paperback
Publisher	Dean Street Press
Year published	2016-10-03
Number of pages	220
Cover note	Book picture is for illustrative purposes only, actual binding, cover or edition may vary.