Nellie Boxall

Nellie Boxall (1890–1965) was a domestic servant. She found notability working for Virginia Woolf. She also worked for Roger Fry and Charles Laughton. Woolf had suggested that she would make an interesting story in her diary and she noted that there were no maids in her father's Dictionary of National Biography. Boxall would be included in its successor the ODNB. Her life is the basis of several novels.

Life Boxall was born in Farncombe, Surrey. Her parents were Sarah (born Marsden) and Henry Boxall. Her father worked in agriculture and in time for a railway company but he died in 1891. Her mother had ten children and Nellie was the youngest. At the age of twelve her mother died too and she became an orphan.

Nellie's difficult relationship was recorded in Virginia's diaries and letters.

Boxall would stay with them for eighteen years she spoke kindly of Virginia Woolf.

Virginia Woolf's later writings include her servant although she never mentioned Boxall by name again. She had earlier written in her diary "If I were reading this diary ... I think I should seize with greed on the portrait of Nelly, & ... make the whole story revolve around that."

In 2007 Alison Light published Mrs Woolf & the Servants: The Hidden Heart of Domestic Service which includes Boxall.