Abstract
One of the dominant features of the late 20th and early 21st century academic debates on the nature of history is a curious form of radicalism both in the ranks of defenders of traditional approaches to history/historiography and eloquent champions of postmodern theories. !ese debates will provide the context for my reading of Steedman’s Master and Servant, which probes disciplinary boundaries of history and #ction in order to explore the unhistoricised ways of love and labour in 18th century industrial Yorkshire. As Steedman inhabits the position of both a professional historian, with all the ideological implications of that position, and Nelly Dean, a servant and narrator in Brontë’s Wuthering Heights, this paper will consider her approach to historical imagination in the light of deconstructionist genre of historical writing.