Reading ... for life without ‘Downton’

No, the subject is “Downton Abbey” itself. The sumptuously soapy PBS series set on a circa-World War I English country estate concludes its second season tonight, just seven weeks after it began. The good news: That’s three weeks longer than Season 1 of the Emmy and Golden Globe winner ran. The bad news: Season 3 isn’t even scheduled to start shooting until sometime this spring in Britain.

That means it’ll be a year before the rabid U.S. fan base gets another fix of intrigue and romance, both upstairs and down.

Luckily, it’s books to the rescue! Remember books, those quaint things that line every shelf in Lord Grantham’s gigantic library at Downton Abbey? A whole crop of new (or newly relevant) volumes has come out just in time to tide the “Downton”-less through the dark days ahead. Whether directly related to the show or not, all provide valuable context and depth to the rarefied world depicted onscreen. (Unless otherwise noted, all are available in printed and e-book format.)

“Lady Almina and the Real Downton Abbey: The Lost Legacy of Highclere Castle” by the Countess of Carnarvon (Broadway Books; 320 pages; $15.99). Nope, they’re not exaggerating with that title. There really was a real-life inspiration for Downton Abbey — Highclere, where the series is filmed, was designed for the 1st Earl of Carnarvon early in the 18th century.

Similarly, a real-life inspiration exists for Lady Cora (Elizabeth McGovern), the nouveau riche American heiress whose marriage to the Earl of Grantham (Hugh Bonneville) gave her social status and gave him a much needed pile of cash to continue running Downton Abbey. Almina Wombwell, the illegitimate daughter of the fabulously wealthy London banker Alfred de Rothschild, was generally unwelcome in society until she married the 5th Earl of Carnarvon in 1895 and — not coincidentally — helped restore Highclere’s fiscal health.

But art imitating life isn’t what’s most fascinating about this fluid account, written by the wife of the present (and 8th) Earl. Almina and her husband emerge as unique characters in their own right: He was a lifelong world traveler and antiquities explorer who co-led the team that discovered King Tut’s tomb in Egypt. She created and ran two hospitals, at Highclere and in London, which are credited with saving the lives of thousands of World War I soldiers.

“Downton” fans undoubtedly will detect traces of Mrs. Crawley and Lady Sybil in the story of the real-life countess, and hints of other characters in the names or descriptions of some patients (such as a Mr. Bates, whose leg injury caused him to walk with a cane).

Unfortunately, only one chapter is devoted to life below stairs at Highclere. “Lady Almina” would be even more interesting if we learned as much about the servants, whose daily drudgery made so much exploring and do-gooding possible.

“Below Stairs” by Margaret Powell (St. Martin’s Press; 212 pages; $22.99). On the other hand, how much reliable documentation likely exists about servants’ lives back then? It’s hard to imagine many footmen or maids putting in 16-hour days of hard labor, then clambering up to their sparsely furnished attic rooms to scribble in their journals or post comments on some Edwardian-era version of Facebook.

No wonder then that Powell’s bracingly honest, wryly observed memoir caused a sensation when it was first published in 1968. As “Downton” creator Julian Fellowes himself attests in a blurb on this newly released edition, Powell’s writing introduced him to a world where servants and employers lived “vividly different lives under one roof.”

Whether that’s sufficient to merit the book’s subtitle — the ... “memoir that inspired ‘Upstairs, Downstairs’ and ‘Downton Abbey’” — is debatable. Beginning at age 13 in 1920, Powell worked her way up the domestic ladder from hotel laundry room laborer to kitchen maid to cook. But the only time she worked in large, abundantly staffed houses was at the very beginning and end of her career, and none of them was on the scale of a Highclere/Downton.

But let’s not nitpick. Powell’s first “downstairs” job as a kitchen maid (think: “Downton’s” Daisy) was a bone-wearying slog that began at 5:30 a.m. with cleaning fireplace flues, polishing every boot in the house and even ironing shoelaces. It ended long after “Them” (as she mentally referred to all her employers) sat down to dinner at 8 p.m.

Rather quickly, Powell, figured out that being a cook was where the true power lay for a female of her limited means and education. Consequently, she kept moving down in house size and up in levels of responsibility until she achieved that goal. And with it she negotiated a major perk: one full day off each month.

Her piercing observations on the upper classes should be required reading in these “We are the 99 percent” days: “I was forced to the conclusion that even their internal organs differed from ours,” she wrote witheringly about one grand lady who insisted the cheap food she fed her staff was, in fact, extra “nourishing”: “Inasmuch as what nourished us did them no good at all.”

In its own way, “Below Stairs” is as one-sided as “Lady Almina.” And just as fascinating. The ideal approach is to read them simultaneously, going upstairs and downstairs, as it were, like in a good episode of “Downton Abbey.”

“The World of Downton Abbey” by Jessica Fellowes (St. Martin’s Press; 303 pages; $29.99). It’s billed as a companion book to the series, so you know what that probably means: Lots of still photos from the set, little in the way of anything new or edifying in the meagre amounts of writing.

Wrong. This is fan material in the best possible sense, digging deep into the historical and sociological underpinnings of the world that created the real-life counterparts of Downton Abbey, kept them magnificently operating — and inevitably, led them to their having to change along with the rest of a rapidly modernizing society.

Thus in chapters like “War” and “Life in Service” do we learn that “below stairs” wasn’t organized much differently than the military — and how after World War I, neither was ever the same again. Even seemingly more frivolous chapters like “Style” contain fascinating details about the size and weight of the bustle worn by a character like the Dowager Countess (Maggie Smith). Is it any wonder she’s so cranky all the time, given how she has to dress to signify her wealth and stature?

An experienced journalist who also happens to be the niece of the series’ creator, Fellowes frequently connects the book’s material to what has happened in the series. Also interspersed throughout are cast interviews, photos and occasional references to what “Julian” observed during his own privileged upbringing and as a young man hanging out at his friends’ great country houses. There’s also an extensive list of suggested further reading.

“To Marry an English Lord” by Gail MacColl and Carol McD. Wallace (Workman Publishing; 403 pages; $15.95; available in March). For a book that inspired “Downton Abbey,” look no further than this 1989 nonfiction work about the wealthy American girls who journeyed to England for three decades beginning in 1890 with the express goal of marrying into the aristocracy. Julian Fellowes was reading it when he was approached about the possibility of creating a television series that revisited the same era as his Oscar-winning script for “Gosford Park.”

“In a way, Cora Grantham was the first character of ‘Downton’ to be imagined, thanks to Ms. MacColl and Ms. Wallace,” Fellowes told The New York Times.

Long out of print, “To Marry an English Lord” was available only in certain libraries (including the University of Georgia) or in pricey used form (last week, paperback and hardcover copies were being offered on Amazon for $200 to $485). But Workman is republishing the suddenly popular title in paperback and e-book format — it comes out in March and can be pre-ordered from Amazon, Barnes and Noble and several other retailers. Additional information: www.workman.com /products/9780761171959.

“The Buccaneers,” by Edith Wharton and Marion Mainwaring (Penguin; 406 pages; $16). The last novel by the great chronicler of upper class American societal mores and maneuvering at the dawn of the 20th century, Wharton’s book is essentially a fictionalized version of “To Marry an English Lord.” It is the saga of five American girls who marry into the British aristocracy — with life-changing results for all involved. Wharton died in 1937 before completing the novel, although she’d left behind notes and a plot synopsis. Originally published in its unfinished form in 1938, “The Buccaneers” was finally completed in 1993 by Wharton scholar Mainwaring.

“Inheritance: The Story of Knole and the Sackvilles” by Robert Sackville-West (Walker & Co.; 320 pages; $26). The current resident of Knole, a country estate in Kent that has been continuously occupied by 13 generations of his family dating to 1605, tells the story of that remarkable relationship. Lord Sackville-West (officially the 7th Baron Sackville-West) will be here Tuesday for a booksigning and talk that organizers say will have special resonance for “Downton Abbey” fans. 6:15 p.m. $25. Atlanta Decorative Arts Center, 351 Peachtree Hills Ave. N.E., Atlanta. Registration required. Call 212-480-2889, Ext. 201, or visit www.royal-oak.org /lectures.