Book of Household Management
Popularly known as Mrs Beeton's Book of Household Management, it was a guide to running a Victorian household, with advice on fashion, child care, animal husbandry, poisons, the management of servants, science, religion, and industrialism. In this book Mrs Beeton also highlights the importance of both animal welfare and the use of local and seasonal produce, long before such concerns became mainstream.
Of the 1,112 pages, over 900 contained recipes, such that another popular name for the volume is Mrs Beeton's Cookbook. Most of the recipes were illustrated with coloured engravings, and it was the first book to show recipes in a format that is still used today. It is said that many of the recipes were actually plagiarised from earlier writers (including Eliza Acton), but the Beetons never claimed that the book's contents were original. It was intended as a guide of reliable information for the aspirant middle classes. Mrs Beeton is perhaps described better as its compiler and editor than as its author, many of the passages clearly being not her own words.
Read more about this topic: Isabella Beeton
Famous quotes containing the word household:
“Compared to other parents, remarried parents seem more desirous of their child’s approval, more alert to the child’s emotional state, and more sensitive in their parent-child relations. Perhaps this is the result of heightened empathy for the child’s suffering, perhaps it is a guilt reaction; in either case, it gives the child a potent weapon—the power to disrupt the new household and come between parent and the new spouse.”
—Letty Cottin Pogrebin (20th century)