Mrs. Beeton's Every Day Cookery and Housekeeping Book, Revised and Enlarged Edition, 1893

Beeton, Isabella. Beeton’s Every-Day Cookery and Housekeeping Book: A Practical and Useful Guide for All Mistresses and Servants. London: Ward, Lock, Bowden & Co., 1893. New Edition, Revised and Greatly Enlarged. Octavo. In the publisher's blue pictorial cloth boards, stamped in black, pink, and white and titled in gilt, on front and spine. Illustrated with full color plates and in text engraved illustrations, numerous original advertisements. 

Presented is an 1893 edition of Beeton’s Every-Day Cookery and Housekeeping Book: A Practical and Useful Guide for All Mistresses and Servants. This edition is an “Entirely New Edition, Revised and Greatly Enlarged,” expanded from the first 1861 printed volume. It was published by Ward, Lock, Bowden & Co. in London and is presented in the publisher's blue pictorial cloth boards, stamped in black, pink, and white and titled in gilt, on the front board and spine. It is illustrated with eight color plates, including one large folding illustration of a dinner table laid for 12 people, as well as numerous full-page and in-text engraved illustrations. Also included are original British advertisements, ranging from cocoa and coffee, jams, soups, soaps and medicinal powders, and spices and flour. 

Isabella Beeton (1836-1865) was only 21 years old when she started working on the book. It was initially serialized in 24 monthly installments, in her husband Samuel Orchart Beeton's publication The Englishwoman's Domestic Magazine. The first installment appeared in 1859. On October 1, 1861, the installments were collected into one volume, published under the title The Book of Household Management. The book was an immediate best-seller, selling 60,000 copies in its first year and totaling nearly two million by 1868. Even after Mrs. Beeton’s death in 1865, the book continued to be a best-seller. The cookbook was revised and reissued for years, as tastes changed and the role of housekeeper expanded to take on more responsibilities.  

This 1893 new edition of Beeton’s Every-Day Cookery and Housekeeping Book begins with a reminder to the readers that if we “look behind the scenes, we might be surprised at the method, care and labour needed to make and keep the wheels of domestic machinery running so smoothly” and “with reverence, that it could not be possible to over-rate the value of one who, by patience, energy and self-sacrifice, succeeded in making all around her contended and comfortable.” What follows is an expansive and methodical approach to “practical housekeeping.” The book’s content ranges from choosing and buying provisions, maintaining housekeeping accounts and running a kitchen department, selecting proper cooking utensils, and building numerous English, French, "foreign and vegetarian” menus, with seasonality and cost in mind. Beeton provides helpful information on serving and pacing coursed dinners and proper table etiquette, imperative for any respected hostess to know.

With an extra emphasis on the science of cookery, and the necessity for learning, the book provides a cook’s time table and a comparative table of fish, beef, lamb, pork, poultry, and veal, with different modes of cooking each meat. It also provides an extensive dictionary of cookery, from A to Z, spanning over five hundred pages, and ends with helpful household work tips. This book was meant to be not just a recipe book, but rather an all-encompassing guide of how the 19th century aristocratic classes ate, hosted, budgeted and maintained a household. It offers wonderful insight into Victorian cuisine and housekeeping, and is still useful today. 

CONDITION:

Very good+ condition. Octavo. In the publisher's blue pictorial cloth boards, stamped in black, pink, and white and titled in gilt, on front and spine. Gilt is bright and intact, some rubbing and loss to white and pink details. Bumping to corners, head cap and spine. Wear along cloth at hinges. Illustrated with full color plates and in text engraved illustrations, numerous original advertisements, all illustrations present. Small loss along creases of the fold-out frontispiece. Endpapers and early interior pages with toning, offsetting. Significant toning on pg. 62 and 63, all else very clean and bright. 

Book Dimensions: 8" H x 5 1/2" W x 2" D.

Accompanied by our company' letter of authenticity.