1
/
of
1
The Short Life And Long Times Of Mrs. Beeton: Kathryn Hughes
The Short Life And Long Times Of Mrs. Beeton: Kathryn Hughes
Regular price
$9.00 AUD
Regular price
Sale price
$9.00 AUD
Unit price
/
per
Couldn't load pickup availability
In Victorian England there was only one fail-safe authority on matters ranging from fashion to puddings to scullery maids: Beeton’s Book of Household Management. This biography pulls back the lace curtains to reveal the woman behind the book - Mrs. Beeton, the first domestic diva of the modern age - and explores the life of the book itself. Isabella Beeton was a twenty-one-year-old newlywed with only six months’ experience running her own home when - coaxed by her husband, a struggling publisher - she began to compile her own book of recipes and domestic advice in a day and age when such books where very few and far between. The aspiring mother hardly suspected that her name would become synonymous with housewifery for generations. Nor would the women who turned to the book for guidance ever have guessed that its author lived in a simple house in the suburbs with a single maid-of-all-work instead of presiding over a well-run estate. Isabella would die at twenty-eight, shortly after the book's publication, never knowing the extent of her legacy. As her survivors faced bankruptcy, sexual scandal and a bitter family feud that lasted more than a century, Mrs. Beeton’s book became an institution. For an exploding population of the newly affluent, it prescribed not only how to cook and clean but ways to cope with the constant social flux of the emerging consumer culture: how to plan a party for ten, whip up a hair pomade or calculate how much money was needed to permit the hiring of a footman. This is also a vivid picture of Victorian home life and its attendant anxieties, nostalgia, and aspirations - not so different from modern life today.
Product Information
Autobiography/Bio/Non-Fiction, Large paperback; faint corner creases on front cover; faint spine creases; tightly bound and clean withinShare
