Part scholarly study, part detective story, part personal journey, Murray's book uncovers a world previously unknown: an influential world of Irish immigrant servants and an ethnically rich one of Yankee, English-immigrant, Native American, and African American maids and laborers, seamstresses and stablemen.

Maid as Muse re-draws what we think we know by looking at how servants influenced the life and language of a writer still electrifying her readers.