The Professional Aunt

The unmarried aunt: everyone's convenience, everyone's second thought, the woman who is sent for when a child has measles and sent home when it is over. Wemyss wrote the English at their least heroic, and this 1910 book is a comedy told by the aunt herself, in her own voice, with a clear-eyed account of exactly what the family thinks she is for. Fifty-three plates by painters including Munch and Sickert, spanning 1885 to 1928, show girls sewing, sitting with cats, and holding roses: the quiet domestic lives that Wemyss's aunt turns into comedy.