The Book of Household Management
London, S O Beeton, 1861. Beeton, Isabella. The Book of Household Management. (2nd Imp) S O Beeton: London, 1861. 8vo (180x115mm) half bnd tan morocco, xxxix,[1],1112pp.
Second-hand hardcover
BEETON, Isabella [Mrs Isabella Mary, née Mayson (1836 - 1865)]
The Book of Household Management; comprising information for the mistress, housekeeper, cook, kitchen-maid. butler, footman, coachman, valet, upper and under house-maids, lady's-maid, maid-of-all-work, laundry-maid, nurse and nurse-maid, monthly, wet, and sick nurses, etc. etc. Also, sanitary, medical, & legal memoranda; with a history of the origin, properties, and uses of all things connected with home life and comfort.
London : S.O. Beeton, 248, Strand, W.C. 1861. First edition, second impression in book form¹. Printed by Cox and Wyman, London.
Octavo (180x120mm) contemporary half bound light brown pebble grain/morocco,spine in 4 compartments, 3 raised bands, gilt ruled and titled, light brown cloth boards, decorative gilt tooled board edges, dark green endpapers, all text-block edges speckled red, xxxix, [1], 1112pp : [a]⁴, b-c⁸, B - 4A⁸, 4B⁴. Chromolithographic illustrated title-page and twelve out-of-text plates, approximately 600 woodblock engraved monochrome in-text illustrations; numerous monochrome wood engraved head and tail pieces.² Board edges lightly rubbed, corners gently bruised; lacks most of the front free endpaper; occasional faint signs of use; faint sporadic foxing; internal text block crisp and clean.
¶ Isabella married Samuel Beeton in 1856, and by mid-1857 was editing his successful English Woman's Domestic Magazine, an innovative women's periodical illustrated with French fashion plates and filled with serialised fiction. The Book of Household Management originated as a twenty-part, 48-page supplement to the magazine, serialised between 1859 and 1861 at a cost of 3d. per part. Published in book form in October 1861, it was an immediate commercial success, with this second impression printed within weeks of the first.
An extensive guide to the management of an urban household in mid-Victorian Britain, The Book of Household Management was larger and more encyclopedic than its predecessors, encompassing cookery alongside medical and legal practice, the management of servants, housekeeping and the raising of children. Beeton claimed very few recipes as her own: some are attributed to Mrs Glasse, Miss Acton, Dr Kitchiner, Mrs Rundell and others, while many were drawn without attribution from contributions to the English Woman's Domestic Magazine and from numerous other sources. Her achievement lay less in original authorship than in her work as writer, journalist, compiler, organiser and editor. The recipes are presented with remarkable clarity and consistency: each of the 2,751 recipes provides, in order, the ingredients, mode, time, average cost, sufficiency and seasonal availability, a systematic format derived in part from Eliza Acton but developed by Beeton into a highly influential model for modern recipe writing. Its distinctive educational apparatus extends well beyond cookery, encompassing relevant history, mythology, religion, agriculture and science.
The Book of Household Management was also among the earliest cookery books to employ colour illustration. The head- and tail-pieces have been attributed to Harrison Weir (1824–1906) and probably Myles Birket Foster (1825–1899); the artist of the colour title-page is unknown. The engraver was probably H. Newsom Woods.³
Two smaller books under Mrs Beeton's name appeared between 1861 and 1865, repeating and reordering material from the present work, while work on a second edition had begun before Isabella's death in 1865; the second edition appeared in 1869. The innumerable subsequent editions, abridgements, adaptations and selections published under her name all derive, directly or indirectly, from this foundational text. Regardless of the origins of much of its content, The Book of Household Management remains a defining authority on Victorian cookery and domestic management, and exerted a profound influence on the domestic culture of the emerging British middle classes throughout the Empire.
§ This impression not included in the usual bibliographies. cf for the first impression Axford p.38; Bitting p.32; Cagle 561; Craig, 8; Simon BG 186.
¹ The illustrated title-page bears the 248 Strand address, and the first line of the errata is corrected to p.657; both are characteristic of the second impression and distinguish it from the first.
² Plates as issued. The idyllic frontispiece of the first impression is absent here; four colour plates retain the white background of the first impression, while eight are printed against the later salmon background, indicating an early point within the second impression.
³ Hughes, Kathryn. The Short Life & Long Times of Mrs Beeton. London : 4th Estate, 2005, p.330.
⁴ Oxford English Dictionary
Item #11148
Price: $2,000.00 AUD