Contents
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, i.e., with all the ingredients listed at the start. It is said that many of the recipes were copied from earlier writers (including Eliza Acton), but the Beetons never claimed that the book's contents were original. 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.
It was intended as a guide of reliable information about every aspect of running a house for the aspirant middle classes. In addition to cooking, its 2,751 entries include tips on how to deal with servants' pay and children's health, and above all a wealth of cooking advice, instructions and recipes. It was an immediate best-seller, selling 60,000 copies in its first year and totalling nearly two million up to 1868. In 1863, a revised edition was issued in installments.
Read more about this topic: Mrs Beeton's Book Of Household Management
Famous quotes containing the word contents:
“To be, contents his natural desire;
He asks no Angel’s wing, no Seraph’s fire;
But thinks, admitted to that equal sky,
His faithful dog shall bear him company.”
—Alexander Pope (1688–1744)
“Conversation ... is like the table of contents of a dull book.... All the greatest subjects of human thought are proudly displayed in it. Listen to it for three minutes, and you ask yourself which is more striking, the emphasis of the speaker or his shocking ignorance.”
—Stendhal [Marie Henri Beyle] (1783–1842)
“How often we must remember the art of the surgeon, which, in replacing the broken bone, contents itself with releasing the parts from false position; they fly into place by the action of the muscles. On this art of nature all our arts rely.”
—Ralph Waldo Emerson (1803–1882)