Mrs Beeton wrote the world’s most famous cookery book

Posted in Historical articles, History on Tuesday, 18 February 2014

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This edited article about Mrs Beeton first appeared in Look and Learn issue number 556 published on 9 September 1972.

Young Mrs Beeton,  picture, image, illustration

Portrait of Mrs Beeton as a child (Isabella May Mayson) by Angus McBride

Probably the most famous cookery book in the world is “The Book of Household Management” by Mrs. Isabella Beeton. The original version, produced in 1861, is of great value today in providing us with a very real picture of daily life in a middle-class Victorian family. This volume, first published in 24 monthly parts at 3d. each, had taken young Mrs. Beeton three years of hard work to prepare. The book consisted of advice for the mistress, the housekeeper, cook, butler, footman, valet and all the rest of the servants of a large household, as well as hundreds of recipes each one of which Isabella tried herself before it was included in the volume. For over a hundred years this book, brought up to date from time to time, has been of help to generations of women.

Isabella Mayson was born in Milk Street in the City of London in 1836. When she was only about 5 years old her father, Benjamin Mayson, died, leaving his widow. Elizabeth, with four young children to bring up alone. A few years later when Mrs. Mayson married Henry Dorling, a printer and bookseller and clerk of the course at Epsom racecourse the family moved to a house in that town. In the years that followed Elizabeth and Henry had thirteen more children and accommodation for such a large family became a problem.

Fortunately Henry Dorling was the sole lessee of the grandstand on the racecourse and, as the stand was only needed for two or three weeks during the year for race meetings. Elizabeth suggested to her husband that some of the children should move in there with their grandmother to ease the congestion. During her girlhood Isabella learned a great deal about catering for and caring for such a large family.

When she was 19 Isabella married her childhood friend, Samuel Beeton, who had become a successful publisher. His firm had already given “Uncle Tom’s Cabin” to the British reading public and had successfully launched several magazines and newspapers. One of these was the “Englishwoman’s Domestic Magazine,” which contained articles on cooking, dress-making, and gardening as well as fiction Isabella was a great help to Samuel in this venture, writing on cookery and fashion and translating French stories for the magazine.

A year after their marriage their first child was born, but when he was only three months old he died. When she recovered from her grief Isabella began work on the book for which she was to become so famous. During the weeks before her wedding she had deplored the lack of “a good book for brides” to explain the problems of managing an establishment of their own: this was the task which she now set herself. The readers of the “Englishwoman’s Domestic Magazine” were invited to submit favourite recipes for inclusion. The headmistress of the finishing school in Heidelberg where Isabella had been a pupil sent a book of German recipes and many other cookery books were scanned for suitable material. At last in 1859 the first instalment of “Household Management” was published.

The work sold well from the very beginning. “The Englishwoman’s Cook Book” which contained only the recipes from “Household Management” soon followed. Meanwhile Samuel was bringing out more magazines: “The Boy’s Own Magazine,” “The Queen,” “The Boy’s Penny Magazine,” Beeton’s “Christmas Annual” and many others.

But the family seemed doomed to suffer tragedy. In 1863 their second child, Samuel, died. A third son, Orchart, was born soon afterwards and two years later the Beeton’s fourth son, Mayson, was born. But Isabella contracted a fever and died when this baby was just a week old.

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