Come Out of the Kitchen (Paperback or Softback)

Come Out of the Kitchen (1916) is a novel by Alice Duer Miller. Inspired by her work as an activist for women’s rights, Miller presents a romantic comedy exploring the effects of class and gender on love, friendship, and work. Adapted for theater and film, Come Out of the Kitchen is a charming novel from a writer whose reputation as a popular poet should extend to her fiction as well. Arriving in the South, Mr. Burton, a successful young businessman, meets with a local real estate agent to inquire about renting a property for the summer. Interested in an old mansion, he is eager to sign the contract―only one strange detail prompts his hesitation. If he would like to stay there, he will need to employ the four domestic servants already living at the property. Desperate to settle down, Burton agrees to meet with them first: the butler, a kind and intelligent man; the cook, a beautiful woman; the housemaid, a sullen young lady; and a young boy whose job is to do everything else. Slightly unsettled by their manners and accents, Burton agrees to keep them on and soon makes his way to the mansion, where he immediately plans to host a small party of friends. When the day of the party arrives, however, the behavior of the servants begins to change. Come Out of the Kitchen is an entertaining romantic comedy from Alice Duer Miller, whose political work as a women’s rights activist informs her characters and their frequently humorous interactions. This edition of Alice Duer Miller’s Come Out of the Kitchen is a classic of American literature reimagined for modern readers.

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Alice Duer Miller (1874-1942) was an American novelist, poet, screenwriter, and women’s rights activist. Born into wealth in New York City, she was raised in a family of politicians, businessmen, and academics. At Barnard College, she studied Astronomy and Mathematics while writing novels, essays, and poems. She married Henry Wise Miller in 1899, moving with him in their young son to Costa Rica where they struggled and failed to open a rubber plantation. Back in New York, Miller earned a reputation as a gifted poet whose satirical poems advocating for women’s suffrage were collected in Are Women People? (1915). Over the next two decades, Miller published several collections of stories and poems, some of which would serve as source material for motion picture adaptations. The White Cliffs (1940), her final published work, is a verse novel that uses the story of a young women widowed during the Great War to pose important questions about the morality of conflict and patriotism in the leadup to the United States’ entrance into World War II.