The best books about a governess

This book was written in the 1930s, yet it feels remarkably contemporary – a glorious romp through a world of parties, sex, and drugs. Miss Pettigrew stumbles into this world when she mistakenly turns up for the wrong job. With little money in her purse she has no option but to take the position and finds herself having an awful lot more fun than she ever has before. And for once she is really appreciated.

I first read this novel when I was ten. Pages had fallen out and even though I later found intact copies, I read it over and over to fill the gaps in my understanding.

How I loved the way Jane took charge of her fate with such intelligence, the way she captured Rochester’s heart without demeaning herself. But oh that madwoman she encountered in the attic. What did Jane make of Bertha, this “clothed hyena?”

Unlike Rochester, she didn’t blame Bertha for her violence. And while she understood Rochester’s dilemma she couldn’t agree to stay with him. In an intolerable situation, I learned, you can love a person and still leave them. Then Bertha dies in a fire she sets, allowing the couple to marry. But I never took that tacked-on ending very seriously.

Grey Mask is the first of the 32 Miss Silver mysteries. Patricia Wentworth was a master of the English style cozy mystery, writing back in the 1920s. I love that this early-twentieth-century series proves that cozy mysteries have been a favorite genre for decades. Wentworth’s character, Miss Maud Silver, whose little old lady with a passion for knitting persona has a keen intellect and penchant for details. 

Grey Mask begins with Charles Moray returning unexpectedly to his home in England after years overseas. Noticing a light on in his manor, he slips in quietly and eavesdrops on a group of intruders planning a crime. Recognizing one of the voices, Charles hesitates to call the police. Instead, he sneaks away and contacts Maud Silver. The matronly sleuth applies deductive reasoning to disrupt the diabolical plan. I recommend looking to the past and reading Patricia Wentworth’s Miss Silver series for an enjoyable… show more.

If you’re like me and a fan of Downton Abbey, then you’ll appreciate the well-researched Edwardian period details found in this charming story, as well as the sweet romance. Julia Foster is not your usual governess, having a remarkable backstory of her own, but the way she cares for the widowed William and his children is heart-warming and will captivate your heart. 

I’m always on the lookout for fiction in which the writing itself is dazzling. Eva Ibbotson’s prose is truly something to savour and this novel is the jewel in her crown. Maia, an orphan, is sent from England to stay with distant relatives, the Carters, in Manaus, Brazil. The family is weird and mean but Maia finds two young friends—Clovis, an actor, and Finn, who is partly a Brazilian native, but heir to his British grandfather’s fortune. Clovis longs to return to England and Finn happily changes places with him. Finn and Maia journey down the Amazon (the “River Sea”) to live with his Xanti people. Expect humour, high adventure, and a richly-detailed look at life in early 20th century Brazil.

Elva Cobb Martin is a household name in the Christian pirate romance genre, but I’d never read any of her works until I picked up The Sugar Baron’s Governess. My first novel by her certainly won’t be my last! This perfect combination of sweet romance and fast-paced adventure reminded me why I love this genre so much, and I know it’ll inspire a love for pirate romance in all who read it! Even though it’s the fourth novel in a series, don’t be afraid to dive right in and enjoy! 

This is the first in the Nell Sweeney Mystery series. And the slow-burn romance extends over the whole series. Set in 19th Century Boston, these little gems kept me on the edge of my seat, while immersing me in the historical period.

Normally, I don’t find drug addicts make for the best romantic heroes, but William Hewett is not your typical hero. Sure, he was a surgeon in the Civil War, where he was injured physically and emotionally and has become hooked on opium because of it, but he’s not a scorch-your-panties-off kind of hot. (It is the Victorian era, after all.) Yet he’s a compelling character and perfect for the heroine who helps to save him. I found I was rooting for this pair every step of the way. I wanted him to heal, kick his habit, and have his HEA with the unconventional Miss Sweeney.

This fictional interpretation of the creation of Alice’s Adventures is seen from the viewpoint of a constant, yet largely unremarked, fixture during these critical years: the Liddell family governess, Mary Prickett. The Oxford context of the time is convincingly depicted, and some of the burning issues of the day – Darwinism and Nonconformism, for instance – are interwoven with the more immediate tensions within the Liddell household, interpreted by an author who has more right than anyone to comment because Tait is the great-granddaughter of the real Alice herself. To sustain the pace she condenses the real events of 1857 to 1863 into a single fictionalised year, drawing on many well-known facts and suppositions – including Carroll’s rumoured amorous interest in Miss Prickett – and some lesser known details from her own family’s archives.

Perhaps the most famous teacher abroad is Anna Leonowens, who was immortalized in the musical The King and I. A lowly Victorian woman single-handedly reshapes the history of Thailand. If you want to read that story you can read Margaret Landon’s Anna and the King of Siam.

Far more interesting is Anna’s true story: a con artist, who lies about everything that happened to her. Habegger’s biography Masked sorts through the lies and fiction. He offers a complicated narrative of a biracial woman who told exaggerated tales of enslavement, romance, and her imagined role in democratizing Thailand. Her life becomes one of fancy and self-invention. Both sadly are traps too often seen in myths crafted by self-absorbed travelers living abroad.

This is one of those special books that made me think, “Oh my…I want to write like this.” The blend of old-world atmosphere, 1950s glamor, and gorgeously descriptive, suspenseful writing is magical. Linda Martin, a young Englishwoman with a secret of her own to guard, takes the post of governess to the small heir of a French chateau—a fairytale setting, but disturbing tensions run beneath its surface, and before long Linda finds herself caught up in a desperate attempt to foil a dangerous plot.

"I really don’t know what we’re going to do with Margaret, Crawfie!" declared Lilibet anxiously to the original nanny diarist. "Poor Lil," responded Margaret, when rumours of her sister’s romance with Philip hit the papers. "Nothing of your own. Not even your love affair!" In the US, this first inside account of life with the modern royals boosted the circulation of the Ladies’ Home Journal magazine by half a million. But in Britain, Buckingham Palace complained that the letters quoted from the princesses breached royal copyright and insisted they be removed. Lilibet never forgave Crawfie for the betrayal embodied in this sickly, but oh-so-revealing tome.  

The year is 1837 and Liberty is a fiercely independent young woman. The story begins with her crossing the Channel to find her father, only to discover that he had recently been killed in a duel. In the course of investigating what had happened, she comes upon a plot that involves treason, with the potential to spark another civil war.

What I love about Peacock’s work is her use of imagery in echoing a character’s psyche or situation. Horse lovers will enjoy Liberty’s relationship with her horse and her growing friendship with her good-hearted stable hand. I have not yet put my finger on it, but for some reason, I feel a hint of Edgar Allen Poe when I read her books.

This French novella was written in the early ’90s but translated in 2019 to English for the first time. It lacks structure and is full of plot holes, but Serre’s writing is equal parts whimsical and erotic. It feels a bit like she wrote it in one sitting during some kind of fever dream but that’s why it feels like a poem. If you’re into chaotic women and turn of the century kink, then this is for you.

This is another tale that starts with a fortune-teller—but this time it’s teenage Jo who gets her future told. The clairvoyant tells her that there is only one true love for her—but the last time Jo saw him was in a past life! Now she needs to find him in this life. Jo doesn’t believe a word of this, but events start to unsettle her. Could reincarnation possibly be true? But what if she can’t recognize her soul-mate when she finds him again in this life? I love the suspense elements in this book as well as the romance.

Reminiscent of the wildness, adventure, and romance of The Last of the Mohicans, Captive Heart sizzles on every page. This is Michelle Griep's best book yet and one that played out before my eyes like an epic movie I kept wanting to watch over and over. The romance is perfect, the adventure nonstop, and the characters really touch your heart. 

A slight genre shift from the typical romantic suspense novel is the Gothic romance, and Victoria Holt (the pen name for Eleanor Hibbert) was one of the best. Like many of the stories published in this genre, there is a young woman, Martha Leigh, hired on as a governess to a troubled widow whose wife died under mysterious circumstances. Settings—as in all gothic novels—play a strong role in this story with its foreboding mansion and the untamed cliffs of Cornwall.

This book immediately stood out to me for a couple of reasons: the setting was vividly described, the characters engaged in simple everyday tasks that not only added depth but helped paint a picture of the era, and the author managed to make this story extremely sexy without explicit lovemaking scenes. I stopped writing explicit scenes years ago and have since aimed for a more sensual tone, which actually poses a much bigger challenge. So I’m always interested to see how other authors (of which I’ve encountered only a few), tackle such scenes in a more suggestive manner while still conveying the passion between the hero and heroine successfully. This book is an excellent example of how less truly can be more.

While there are haunted house-like novels before James’s 1898 classic, this in many ways is a granddaddy of modern haunted tales. An isolated country estate? Check. A creepy housekeeper? Check. Two even creepier children, possibly possessed? Check, check! When the unnamed narrator is hired as the new governess in a remote country home in England, she arrives to find that her two young wards are already nearly corrupted by the ghosts of the former governess and groundskeeper. As she works to save them, the narrator herself is threatened, both by the ghosts and by the children she’s meant to save. The psychological possibilities of this book, however, linger at the edges of the text, threatening to undermine the whole notion of what this haunting really is.

In what I would call a modern gothic setting, the story revolves around a reclusive author and the missing thirteenth tale from her collection of stories.

The author commissions a biographer to write the story of her life, which she has fictionalized throughout her entire career. There’s a governess, ghosts, an amazing garden, and an insane fire – all of which stack up for one heck of a great novel.

James’s novella is the closest thing I know to a literary version of the “Rabbit or Duck?” illusion— either a ghost story or a case study in psychopathology, depending on your perspective.

Miles and Flora, 10 and 8, are Victorian orphans left in the charge of an uncaring uncle. Their governess is far more attentive, but her own cloistered religious upbringing hasn’t prepared her for a world of anything other than Purity versus Corruption.

When she learns that the previous governess at Bly House was seduced by the uncle’s valet, she’s driven at any cost to purge the children of their vile influences—which she thinks they continue to exert as ghosts. But is she the only dangerous adult presence?

A chilling look at the power of puritanical ideology and the total dependence of children on their educators and caregivers, this book is well worth whacking through the thicket of James’s… show more.