Book dossier

Mrs Beeton's every day cookery and housekeeping book

by Isabella Beeton

I have a copy with this title and no copyright date. If you would like more specific information, communicate with me. There are several advertisers in the book. Penciled inside the front cover is 3/6 - I have taken that to mean this book sold for 3 Shillings/sixpence and indeed, there is a listing in the book: Ward, Lock & Co.'s List of Standard Reference Volumes, Popular useful Books, Approved Educational Works, Illustrated Gift Books, &c. The first listing in s"The Best Work For Self-Educators - in Three Vols., cloth gilt, [etc]" priced at 7/6 PER VOLUME - My Beeton's book appears later in the section "The Standard Cookery Books" priced at 3/6 and described as Cloth Gilt, price 3s., 6d. The publisher has 3 locations: London, New York, and Melbourne Of note to women: The Philosophy of Housekeeping (pp i-lxiv) includes very specific instructions for the wife or mistress of a household in the Routine of Household Works and Ways. Excerpts from 427 items/tips: 1. "... she is steward of her husband's property..." 4. "Early Rising on the part of the mistress..." 5. "... rise at latest (italicized) at seven o'clock..." 7. "As soon as THE MISTRESS hears her husband's step, the bell should be rung for the hot dish." The drift is clear and the instructions cover the duties of servants. Date? sometime after 1858 as there is a reference to India as a colony and before c. 1894 as it contains an ad for Captain Warren's Patent Everybody's Cooking Pot mentioned on p. 133 of Quotations and Sources on Design and the Decorative Arts edited by Paul Greenhalgh - source 9: Mary Jewry (British) Food Consumption and Kitchen Equipment (c. 1894) Also in the list is "Violin-Making as It Was and Is Being a Historical, Theoretical, and Practical Treatise on the Science and Art of Violin-Making, for the Use of Violin ... Amateur and Professional" by Edward Heron-Allen (Author) and noted: " Important Work on the Violin - Second Edition, Dedicated by Special Permission to H.R.H the Duke of Edinburgh." 10s 6d. The preface notes that this is the "... first of a series of Practical Manuals which were to be called the 'All About It' Books - were thus explained in a Prospectus issued a few months ago, and approved by the late Mrs. S. O. Beeton". She died in 1865 of puerperal fever according to The Guardian - Oct 5, 2005 in a book review. Interesting for the color plates and descriptions of Cookery over 1650 "reciepts"- first read about Bubble-and-Squeak and Toad-In-The-Hole here (making British literature more understandable). 11 recipes for eel.