ABSTRACT
One of the most famous housekeeping manuals from the period is Isabella Beeton’s Book of Household Management, a collection of articles written for her husband’s magazine, and published when she was only twenty-five, in 1861. Household books, however, were a thriving industry and one of the arenas to which many women turned their hands. Henriette Davidis published Hausfrau, when Beeton was only eight years old, and with seventy-six editions to 1963 it was a definitive guide to cooking and household management which left a decisive mark on German cuisine. Dane Anne Mangor was also highly popular, with forty editions of her Cookbook for Small Households between 1837 and 1910, and a successor volume of twenty-nine editions. Although the extract is somewhat whimsical, it captures the ambience that housewives were to achieve. Frenchwoman Cora Millet-Robinet was herself a countrywoman with a mission to better educate rural French women and her Maison rustique is a classic. The range covered by these books, which went beyond simple housekeeping and cleaning, is exemplified by her concern to understand and be able to deal with household medical matters – and to know when not to.
