As with the commander of an army, or the leader of any enterprise, so it is with the mistress of a house. A founding text of Victorian middle-class identity, Mrs Beeton’s Book of  Household Management is today one of the great unread classics. Mrs Beeton was only 22 when she compiled this thorough and authoritative volume, written in response to the lack of such books for the newly married housewife of 1860 – and who might not have the good fortune of a parent or guardian to guide her through the initial lessons of marriage, housekeeping, cookery and the myriad necessary knowledge of the day. Over a thousand pages long, it offered advice on subjects as diverse as fashion, child-care, animal husbandry, poisons and the management of servants. There’s no stuffy moralising here;  it’s a mix of domestic advice with discussions of science, religion, class, industrialism and gender roles as well as ranging widely across the foods of Europe and beyond, actively embracing new food stuffs and techniques. Alternately fashionable and frugal, anxious and blusteringly self-confident, Household Management highlights the concerns of the ever-expanding Victorian middle-class at a key moment in its history.