Margaret Powell

Before she was a famous New York City fashion designer, Ann Lowe was a young Black girl growing up in Alabama, surrounded by flowers and the fabric inside her mother's dress shop. Ann learned sewing skills from her mother and soon was helping her create gowns for the city's wealthy White establishment. Tragedy befalls her when she is just sixteen years old: her mother falls ill and later dies, leaving Ann to compartmentalize her grief and work around...

The author gives readers a closer look at the world inside the vast kitchens of these great houses. It's an eye-opening and mouthwatering snapshot of that world. The upstairs dining room always demanded the best of Continental cuisine and, cooking downstairs, Margaret Powell obliged. Her cookery book is a firsthand account of the way people cooked and dined in the early twentieth century when houses like those in "Upstairs, Downstairs" and "Downton...