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We each of us strive for domestic bliss, and we may look to Delia and Nigella to give us tips on achieving the unattainable. Kathryn Hughes, acclaimed for her biography of George Eliot, has pulled back the curtains to look at the creator of the ultimate book on keeping house. In Victorian England what did every middle-class housewife need to create the perfect home? 'The Book of Household Management'. 'Oh, but of course!' Mrs Beeton would no doubt declare with brisk authority. But Mrs Beeton is not quite the matronly figure that has kept her name resonating 150 years after the publication of 'The Book of Household Management'. The famous pages of carefully costed recipes, warnings about not gossiping to visitors, and making sure you always keep your hat on in someone else's house were indispensable in the moulding of the Victorian domestic bliss. But there are many myths surrounding the legend of Mrs Beeton. It is very possible that her book was given so much social standing through fear as she was believed to be a bit of an old dragon. It seems though that Mrs Beeton was a series of contradictions. Kathryn Hughes reveals here that Bella Beeton was a million miles away from the stoical, middle-aged matron. She was in fact only 25 years old when she created the guide to successful family living and had only had five years experience of her own to inform her. She lived in a semi-detached house in Pinner with the bare minimum of servants. She bordered on being a workaholic, and certainly wasn't the meek and mild little wife that her book was aimed at - more a highly intelligent and ambitious young woman. After preaching about wholesome and clean living, Bella Beeton died at the age of 28 from (contrary to her parent's belief) bad hygiene. Kathryn Hughes sympathetically explores the irony behind Bella Beeton's public and private image in this highly readable and informative study of Victorian lifestyle.… (more)
User reviews
LibraryThing member emily_morine
One of my goals for 2008 is to read more biography, and I've already finished my first one of the year: Kathryn Hughes' The Short Life and Long Times of Mrs. Beeton.
Hughes' book is more a biography of a book than a biography of a person, which was a great way to start out the project. Mrs. Beeton's
Not only that, but from its very beginnings the book was a cobbled-together collage portrait of cookery, etiquette and home management books spanning the previous fifty years, the Beetons doing something between editing and plagiarizing the tome into existence. The book and its brand only got more hybrid and multi-authored as time went on, with successive generations of Beeton women publishing under the moniker "Mrs. Beeton," successive generations of publishers revising and expanding Management's original text, and, eventually, a full-blown sale of the Mrs. Beeton brand. As Hughes points out in the final pages of her study, all this results in a dispersed "text" that is just the type of thing postmodern theorists seek out and drool over. Our culture right now is interested in, and wants to be comfortable with, texts which have no clear author, whose creation was a complex or multi-part process. But Hughes argues that, judging by modern reactions to the way the Beeton book was put together, we are actually a lot less comfortable with this crossbred concoction than the mid-Victorians were. Whereas pilfering from other peoples' cookbooks was common practice when Mrs. Beeton was doing it so thoroughly in the 1860's, we can't help feeling a bit shocked and let down when we judge her by our modern standards of authorship, and it is sometimes difficult for a contemporary reader to locate what exactly it is that she and her husband did. They didn't exactly write a book, but they managed to assemble a mish-mash of material from other sources in such a way that the finished product spoke eloquently to the age's upwardly-striving middle classes.
And because Mrs. Beeton's became so wildly successful and influential, it also served to freeze certain moments of British cookery and homemaking in time, extending them far beyond what would otherwise have been their normal lifespan. Hughes takes the famous tendency of the British to boil vegetables into a pulp: the declining quality of domestic produce in the 1850's and '60's meant that there were good reasons that people were boiling their vegetables back then, but the inclusion of those long boiling times in Mrs. Beeton's meant that the practice got extended for years after those reasons had faded away. In fact, as Virginia Woolf's To the Lighthouse attests, people were still skinning and boiling their vegetables into an overdone mess well into the twentieth century, when fresh and delicious veggies were readily available. Hence Mrs. Beeton, or at least Mrs. Beeton's, gets blamed for "ruining cooking in Britain," despite the fact that Mrs. Beeton herself never invented a recipe or sanctioned a process. It's an interesting meditation on custom and influence.
Also fascinating was the point that because the Mrs. Beeton brand is constantly being reinvented, each new generation thinks of her as a person who probably belonged to their parents' or grandparents' generation. A recent play associated her with World War II-era Britain, and people in the 1930's thought of her as epitomizing the decadence and extravagance of the Edwardian era. Apparently, Lytton Strachey considered including her in his famous dirt-slinger, Eminent Victorians, and envisaged her as a "tub-like" woman all in black, who bore a resemblance to Queen Victoria herself. Whether in service of breaking with one's forerunners or indulging in nostalgia for times gone by, the legendary Mrs. Beeton seems always just prior to any person's direct experience. Having some sense of who she actually was - a practical, organized middle-class woman who pitched in with her husband's publishing business, mourned her syphilis-induced inability to produce healthy children, and died very young - added much to my enjoyment of sampling later generations' visions of her.
The Beetons à la Hughes remind me of the "on-the-go" stereotype of today's high-powered businesspeople. Always on the lookout for magazine article fodder, they both worked constantly, even on vacation, making contacts with French illustrators or scouting out locations for descriptive pieces. It's good to be reminded that, as much as we talk about life getting faster and more demanding in the modern era, there have always been people driven to live like the Beetons, and the necessities they were under, such as corresponding by letter and traveling by train, hardly made their lives simpler or more idyllic. They were editing gigantic tomes of "universal knowledge" while also editing and writing pieces for their stable of magazines, all of which were monthly or bi-weekly. I think that so often the word "Victorian" summons up images of domestic tranquility and well-ordered social clubs, tea parties and sitting around the family fire of an evening. Life for the Beetons, though, ran at break-neck speed. This realization is especially ironic considering that the Book of Household Management is full of plate illustrations depicting idyllic farmyard scenes, hearkening back to an imaginary time of bygone pleasures similar to the one that many people conjure up when thinking about Victorians. So the Beetons were looking backward at the eighteenth century, and we are looking backward at them. I wonder how far back one must go before the backward glances cease.
Hughes also makes some interesting points about the shifting class dynamics in England at the time, and how they affected the Beeton family. Specifically, Isabella's decision to work for money alongside Sam was taken at a crucial moment when it was becoming expected that "respectable" women stay home and preside over the domestic realm. Both Sam and Isabella were part of the rapidly growing middle class whose parents or grandparents were servants but who had made a more prestigious place for themselves in the world. In the previous generation, or at least the generation before that, it was totally acceptable for wives to work for money, especially in their husbands' businesses (Sam's mother and stepmother both worked as publicans at the Dolphin, the inn owned by the Beeton family). But by the time Isabella got married, the more "refined" tastes of mid-Victorianism meant that her journalism was seen as mildly scandalous in its own right, and also a negative reflection on Sam's ability to support his family. It is one of the many ironies of the Beetons' story that one of their largest joint projects involved putting out a book that reinforced exactly those ideals of feminine domesticity that they themselves were flouting. It is interesting, also, to see them rooted so concretely in a specific time and class, because after their deaths Mrs. Beeton's was re-imagined to accord with the customs and expectations (ever-fancier, at least until the post-war generation) that came with middle-class life as time progressed.
There are also "juicier" tidbits in this story - the portrayal of Sam Beeton's decline into self-destructive insanity after Isabella's death is the stuff of tabloids (Lytton Strachey would be proud). And the evocation of Isabella's upbringing at Epsom, the site of the famous Derby, where her stepfather was a local kingpin and where she helped to raise her siblings and half-siblings in the deserted Grandstand for the majority of the year, are vivid and intriguing. But it's really the history of the book that provides the most food for thought here, and I thought that Hughes did a good job tracing its various versions and meanings throughout the Beetons' lives and beyond.
Hughes' book is more a biography of a book than a biography of a person, which was a great way to start out the project. Mrs. Beeton's
Show More
Book of Household Management, in its many incarnations and branded spin-offs, has been THE go-to manual for British homemakers for over a hundred years, but its long career of clout and influence didn't really get going until after Mrs. Beeton herself had died, and after her publisher husband, who provided much of the driving force for the book's creation, had fallen into syphilitic insanity and had to sell his company and furniture to pay his creditors. In a way, the story of the actual Beetons is secondary to the story of Beeton's itself.Not only that, but from its very beginnings the book was a cobbled-together collage portrait of cookery, etiquette and home management books spanning the previous fifty years, the Beetons doing something between editing and plagiarizing the tome into existence. The book and its brand only got more hybrid and multi-authored as time went on, with successive generations of Beeton women publishing under the moniker "Mrs. Beeton," successive generations of publishers revising and expanding Management's original text, and, eventually, a full-blown sale of the Mrs. Beeton brand. As Hughes points out in the final pages of her study, all this results in a dispersed "text" that is just the type of thing postmodern theorists seek out and drool over. Our culture right now is interested in, and wants to be comfortable with, texts which have no clear author, whose creation was a complex or multi-part process. But Hughes argues that, judging by modern reactions to the way the Beeton book was put together, we are actually a lot less comfortable with this crossbred concoction than the mid-Victorians were. Whereas pilfering from other peoples' cookbooks was common practice when Mrs. Beeton was doing it so thoroughly in the 1860's, we can't help feeling a bit shocked and let down when we judge her by our modern standards of authorship, and it is sometimes difficult for a contemporary reader to locate what exactly it is that she and her husband did. They didn't exactly write a book, but they managed to assemble a mish-mash of material from other sources in such a way that the finished product spoke eloquently to the age's upwardly-striving middle classes.
And because Mrs. Beeton's became so wildly successful and influential, it also served to freeze certain moments of British cookery and homemaking in time, extending them far beyond what would otherwise have been their normal lifespan. Hughes takes the famous tendency of the British to boil vegetables into a pulp: the declining quality of domestic produce in the 1850's and '60's meant that there were good reasons that people were boiling their vegetables back then, but the inclusion of those long boiling times in Mrs. Beeton's meant that the practice got extended for years after those reasons had faded away. In fact, as Virginia Woolf's To the Lighthouse attests, people were still skinning and boiling their vegetables into an overdone mess well into the twentieth century, when fresh and delicious veggies were readily available. Hence Mrs. Beeton, or at least Mrs. Beeton's, gets blamed for "ruining cooking in Britain," despite the fact that Mrs. Beeton herself never invented a recipe or sanctioned a process. It's an interesting meditation on custom and influence.
Also fascinating was the point that because the Mrs. Beeton brand is constantly being reinvented, each new generation thinks of her as a person who probably belonged to their parents' or grandparents' generation. A recent play associated her with World War II-era Britain, and people in the 1930's thought of her as epitomizing the decadence and extravagance of the Edwardian era. Apparently, Lytton Strachey considered including her in his famous dirt-slinger, Eminent Victorians, and envisaged her as a "tub-like" woman all in black, who bore a resemblance to Queen Victoria herself. Whether in service of breaking with one's forerunners or indulging in nostalgia for times gone by, the legendary Mrs. Beeton seems always just prior to any person's direct experience. Having some sense of who she actually was - a practical, organized middle-class woman who pitched in with her husband's publishing business, mourned her syphilis-induced inability to produce healthy children, and died very young - added much to my enjoyment of sampling later generations' visions of her.
The Beetons à la Hughes remind me of the "on-the-go" stereotype of today's high-powered businesspeople. Always on the lookout for magazine article fodder, they both worked constantly, even on vacation, making contacts with French illustrators or scouting out locations for descriptive pieces. It's good to be reminded that, as much as we talk about life getting faster and more demanding in the modern era, there have always been people driven to live like the Beetons, and the necessities they were under, such as corresponding by letter and traveling by train, hardly made their lives simpler or more idyllic. They were editing gigantic tomes of "universal knowledge" while also editing and writing pieces for their stable of magazines, all of which were monthly or bi-weekly. I think that so often the word "Victorian" summons up images of domestic tranquility and well-ordered social clubs, tea parties and sitting around the family fire of an evening. Life for the Beetons, though, ran at break-neck speed. This realization is especially ironic considering that the Book of Household Management is full of plate illustrations depicting idyllic farmyard scenes, hearkening back to an imaginary time of bygone pleasures similar to the one that many people conjure up when thinking about Victorians. So the Beetons were looking backward at the eighteenth century, and we are looking backward at them. I wonder how far back one must go before the backward glances cease.
Hughes also makes some interesting points about the shifting class dynamics in England at the time, and how they affected the Beeton family. Specifically, Isabella's decision to work for money alongside Sam was taken at a crucial moment when it was becoming expected that "respectable" women stay home and preside over the domestic realm. Both Sam and Isabella were part of the rapidly growing middle class whose parents or grandparents were servants but who had made a more prestigious place for themselves in the world. In the previous generation, or at least the generation before that, it was totally acceptable for wives to work for money, especially in their husbands' businesses (Sam's mother and stepmother both worked as publicans at the Dolphin, the inn owned by the Beeton family). But by the time Isabella got married, the more "refined" tastes of mid-Victorianism meant that her journalism was seen as mildly scandalous in its own right, and also a negative reflection on Sam's ability to support his family. It is one of the many ironies of the Beetons' story that one of their largest joint projects involved putting out a book that reinforced exactly those ideals of feminine domesticity that they themselves were flouting. It is interesting, also, to see them rooted so concretely in a specific time and class, because after their deaths Mrs. Beeton's was re-imagined to accord with the customs and expectations (ever-fancier, at least until the post-war generation) that came with middle-class life as time progressed.
There are also "juicier" tidbits in this story - the portrayal of Sam Beeton's decline into self-destructive insanity after Isabella's death is the stuff of tabloids (Lytton Strachey would be proud). And the evocation of Isabella's upbringing at Epsom, the site of the famous Derby, where her stepfather was a local kingpin and where she helped to raise her siblings and half-siblings in the deserted Grandstand for the majority of the year, are vivid and intriguing. But it's really the history of the book that provides the most food for thought here, and I thought that Hughes did a good job tracing its various versions and meanings throughout the Beetons' lives and beyond.
Show Less
LibraryThing member AdonisGuilfoyle
Last year, BBC4 repeated a drama based on the ‘secret life’ of Mrs Beeton, the Victorian lady behind the iconic and enduring Book of Household Management, and I was engrossed. For a start, the cast was very attractive, with Anna Madeley as the title character and JJ Feild as her publisher
Isabella Beeton, born Mayson, lived a full yet brief life in the mid-Victorian era. Born in 1836, she was raised in an extended family by her mother and step-father, who ran Epsom race course, and married editor and publisher Samuel Orchart Beeton in 1856. The couple had four children, but two sadly died in infancy – the result, Hughes claims, of Sam infecting Isabella with syphilis – and Isabella herself died, aged 28, soon after the birth of youngest son Mayson.
In her personal life, Isabella was no different to any other middle class Victorian wife. What sets her apart, and makes her story well worth reading, is her professional career as journalist, ‘editress’ and publisher, and the impact her book has had on British food and domestic culture for over 150 years. Surely everyone has heard of Mrs Beeton’s Book of Household Management, even if the mammoth household bible no longer graces our shelves at home!
Sam and Isabella worked together as partners at S.O. Beeton, Sam’s publishing firm, producing not only instructive manuals like the ‘BOHM’, but also magazines including ‘The Englishwoman’s Domestic Magazine’ and ‘The Queen’, which later evolved into ‘Harper’s and Queen’. Sam respected his wife’s judgement and business skills – probably because she was organised, and he was not – and the two of them viewed the publication of the ‘BOHM’ as a ‘clever publishing idea’, aimed at servants and new brides and every woman in between. Isabella did not write the copy herself, but gathered together sources from a range of historical predecessors, including Eliza Acton and Hannah Glasse, plus famous chefs Careme and Brillat-Savarin. What she did contribute was a straightforward, plain-spoken approach to running a home, indexing, organising and ‘rephrasing’ tried and tested material from more experienced authors. Hughes lays open Mrs Beeton’s ‘secret’ technique, but also defends Isabella against the harsh accusations of plagiarism levelled against her by Elizabeth David and Clarissa Dickson-Wright.
In the interview with the author at the end of the book, Kathryn Hughes writes that she became possessive of Mrs Beeton during her five years of research, viewing the household name as ‘My Mrs Beeton’, and there is a definite note of familiarity and fondness in her writing. Fair but firm, Miss Hughes takes Isabella’s side against ‘little man’ Sam Beeton at home and modern critics en masse, but also admits that the ‘BOHM’ upon which Isabella’s posthumous fame and reputations rests – not to mention the many and multiform ‘bastard progeny’ of the original book – was more a triumph of marketing than a demonstration of skill. (Isabella, like Kathryn Hughes, was a journalist first and foremost, not a cook, and did not personally test every recipe in the ‘BOHM’, as legend has it).
Kathryn Hughes’ biography of Mrs Beeton not only sets the record straight – dispelling the myth that Mrs Beeton was a ‘tub-like lady in black’, if she existed at all – but also builds a detailed background of Isabella’s marriage, family and career in publishing. Starting from a bundle of love letters bought at auction, Hughes fills in the gaps, brings history to life, and corrects the dubious research of previous Beeton biographies, presenting the most accurate account of Sam and Isabella’s lives to date. She also sets the scene with a wealth of interesting historical information on Victorian diet and home life in Industrial Britain. Isabella is presented favourably, as a working mother, respected wife and helpful business partner, and Sam as a loving but unreliable husband, a ‘buried subtext’, who goes completely off the rails after Isabella’s death (possibly due to his ‘illness’). Hughes’ claim that Sam infected Isabella with syphilis, which resulted in many miscarriages and the loss of two young children, is not supported by any factual evidence, but seems to fit with medical diagnosis.
If the full biography is too in-depth for a first introduction, however, then ‘The Secret Life of Mrs Beeton’ (2006) is available on DVD!
Show More
husband, but like most people today, I had no idea that the ‘matronly’ Mrs Beeton was actually only in her twenties when she wrote the ‘BOHM’, or that she died so young. Neither, unfortunately, did it occur to me that the TV drama was based on a more in-depth biography by Kathryn Hughes. Isabella Beeton, born Mayson, lived a full yet brief life in the mid-Victorian era. Born in 1836, she was raised in an extended family by her mother and step-father, who ran Epsom race course, and married editor and publisher Samuel Orchart Beeton in 1856. The couple had four children, but two sadly died in infancy – the result, Hughes claims, of Sam infecting Isabella with syphilis – and Isabella herself died, aged 28, soon after the birth of youngest son Mayson.
In her personal life, Isabella was no different to any other middle class Victorian wife. What sets her apart, and makes her story well worth reading, is her professional career as journalist, ‘editress’ and publisher, and the impact her book has had on British food and domestic culture for over 150 years. Surely everyone has heard of Mrs Beeton’s Book of Household Management, even if the mammoth household bible no longer graces our shelves at home!
Sam and Isabella worked together as partners at S.O. Beeton, Sam’s publishing firm, producing not only instructive manuals like the ‘BOHM’, but also magazines including ‘The Englishwoman’s Domestic Magazine’ and ‘The Queen’, which later evolved into ‘Harper’s and Queen’. Sam respected his wife’s judgement and business skills – probably because she was organised, and he was not – and the two of them viewed the publication of the ‘BOHM’ as a ‘clever publishing idea’, aimed at servants and new brides and every woman in between. Isabella did not write the copy herself, but gathered together sources from a range of historical predecessors, including Eliza Acton and Hannah Glasse, plus famous chefs Careme and Brillat-Savarin. What she did contribute was a straightforward, plain-spoken approach to running a home, indexing, organising and ‘rephrasing’ tried and tested material from more experienced authors. Hughes lays open Mrs Beeton’s ‘secret’ technique, but also defends Isabella against the harsh accusations of plagiarism levelled against her by Elizabeth David and Clarissa Dickson-Wright.
In the interview with the author at the end of the book, Kathryn Hughes writes that she became possessive of Mrs Beeton during her five years of research, viewing the household name as ‘My Mrs Beeton’, and there is a definite note of familiarity and fondness in her writing. Fair but firm, Miss Hughes takes Isabella’s side against ‘little man’ Sam Beeton at home and modern critics en masse, but also admits that the ‘BOHM’ upon which Isabella’s posthumous fame and reputations rests – not to mention the many and multiform ‘bastard progeny’ of the original book – was more a triumph of marketing than a demonstration of skill. (Isabella, like Kathryn Hughes, was a journalist first and foremost, not a cook, and did not personally test every recipe in the ‘BOHM’, as legend has it).
Kathryn Hughes’ biography of Mrs Beeton not only sets the record straight – dispelling the myth that Mrs Beeton was a ‘tub-like lady in black’, if she existed at all – but also builds a detailed background of Isabella’s marriage, family and career in publishing. Starting from a bundle of love letters bought at auction, Hughes fills in the gaps, brings history to life, and corrects the dubious research of previous Beeton biographies, presenting the most accurate account of Sam and Isabella’s lives to date. She also sets the scene with a wealth of interesting historical information on Victorian diet and home life in Industrial Britain. Isabella is presented favourably, as a working mother, respected wife and helpful business partner, and Sam as a loving but unreliable husband, a ‘buried subtext’, who goes completely off the rails after Isabella’s death (possibly due to his ‘illness’). Hughes’ claim that Sam infected Isabella with syphilis, which resulted in many miscarriages and the loss of two young children, is not supported by any factual evidence, but seems to fit with medical diagnosis.
If the full biography is too in-depth for a first introduction, however, then ‘The Secret Life of Mrs Beeton’ (2006) is available on DVD!
Show Less
LibraryThing member cbl_tn
I first heard of Mrs. Beeton when I was in my early 20s and living in England. Her Book of Household Management was still in print, and I bought a reprint as a gift for my mother. I assumed then that Mrs. Beeton was at least middle age and wrote from decades of experience. At some point I learned
A careful parsing of the title reveals that this is a biography, not just of Isabella Beeton, but also of her Book of Household Management, which is sometimes referred to as Mrs. Beeton. Hughes studies several generations of Isabella's family, as well as her husband, Sam Beeton's family, in order to put Isabella's life in context. The book also serves as a social history of the mid-Victorian era, and a history of book and magazine publishing during that era.
Ever since I learned that Mrs. Beeton was a young woman when she wrote her famous book, I had wondered how she had acquired enough experience to write the book. What I learned from Hughes is that Mrs. Beeton was a compiler rather than an author. She borrowed from multiple sources, largely without attribution. Hughes has tracked down many, if not most, of her sources and provides numerous examples of the content that each source “contributed” to Mrs. Beeton's book. She credits Mrs. Beeton with reformatting her borrowed content into a more useful sequence; for instance, she was among the first to employ the now-familiar recipe pattern of first listing ingredients followed by the cooking instructions.
There was a rift between Isabella's Mayson and Dorling relatives and Sam's Beeton relatives for several generations. Earlier biographies slanted toward one side or the other, depending on which side of the family provided their source material. Hughes had access to sources representing both perspectives, and consequently her book is probably the definitive biography of Isabella Beeton, at least for now.
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that she was a young woman, in her 20s and newly married, when she wrote the book that made her a household name. That's about all I knew of her before I read Kathryn Hughes' book.A careful parsing of the title reveals that this is a biography, not just of Isabella Beeton, but also of her Book of Household Management, which is sometimes referred to as Mrs. Beeton. Hughes studies several generations of Isabella's family, as well as her husband, Sam Beeton's family, in order to put Isabella's life in context. The book also serves as a social history of the mid-Victorian era, and a history of book and magazine publishing during that era.
Ever since I learned that Mrs. Beeton was a young woman when she wrote her famous book, I had wondered how she had acquired enough experience to write the book. What I learned from Hughes is that Mrs. Beeton was a compiler rather than an author. She borrowed from multiple sources, largely without attribution. Hughes has tracked down many, if not most, of her sources and provides numerous examples of the content that each source “contributed” to Mrs. Beeton's book. She credits Mrs. Beeton with reformatting her borrowed content into a more useful sequence; for instance, she was among the first to employ the now-familiar recipe pattern of first listing ingredients followed by the cooking instructions.
There was a rift between Isabella's Mayson and Dorling relatives and Sam's Beeton relatives for several generations. Earlier biographies slanted toward one side or the other, depending on which side of the family provided their source material. Hughes had access to sources representing both perspectives, and consequently her book is probably the definitive biography of Isabella Beeton, at least for now.
Show Less
LibraryThing member kdebros
Biography of Isabelle Beaton, who wrote the essential book of running a household for turn of the century housewives...having been married for only a couple years. A bit scattered, but very interesting if you like that sort of thing. I enjoyed it - others may not.
LibraryThing member cat-ballou
Again, a very good candidate for a half-star review. I would like to have given this one-and-a-half stars, because it was so easy to put down. And leave. For a long time. It wasn't bad, per se, it just wasn't good, either. One nit that I'll pick is that the author doesn't stick to a chronological
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timeline. Usually this isn't that much of a problem for me, but the lack of clear transitions and segues made this confusing and contributed to my general lack of interest. Show Less
LibraryThing member cat-ballou
Again, a very good candidate for a half-star review. I would like to have given this one-and-a-half stars, because it was so easy to put down. And leave. For a long time. It wasn't bad, per se, it just wasn't good, either. One nit that I'll pick is that the author doesn't stick to a chronological
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timeline. Usually this isn't that much of a problem for me, but the lack of clear transitions and segues made this confusing and contributed to my general lack of interest. Show Less
LibraryThing member DeltaQueen50
I really struggled through The Short Life and Long Times of Mrs Beeton by Kathryn Hughes. That the author was hamstrung by the simple fact that there just isn’t a lot of information available about this woman, who was dead by the age of 28, is obvious. I felt she relied too much on supposition.
I was about to pearl-rule this book, when I suddenly found myself reading an interlude that would describe the Victorian world in colourful detail, facts on Victorian habits, fashions, the food they ate and the social niceties of the day which I found both interesting and enlightening and much less tedious than the actual history of the Beeton family.
Overall, a slow, boring story with tidbits of interesting facts scattered throughout.
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Phrases like “She might have…”, “she would have …” or “It’s possible that she…” were overused to stretch the scant information that was available. The beginning parts of the book was supplemented with information on the history of the family. Reading about the great-grandparents, the grandparents, the parents and all the brothers and sisters caused my eyes to glaze over.I was about to pearl-rule this book, when I suddenly found myself reading an interlude that would describe the Victorian world in colourful detail, facts on Victorian habits, fashions, the food they ate and the social niceties of the day which I found both interesting and enlightening and much less tedious than the actual history of the Beeton family.
Overall, a slow, boring story with tidbits of interesting facts scattered throughout.
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LibraryThing member hailelib
For me, "Mrs. Beeton" alternated between very interesting and somewhat boring and, at times, was easy to put down for a few days. Some sections were more interesting than others and I particularly liked a couple of sections in the last half. As one reviewer said, this book is as much a biography of
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a book as anything else. For information on the English Victorian middle class and the London publishing scene it is very good. A "Life and Times" book that is more about the times than the life and probably not for everyone. Show Less
LibraryThing member Helenliz
This sounded really very nteresting - a biography of te original Mrs Beeton (she of cookery book fame) and a discourse on how the book has had a life of its own without her. Unfortunately, it didn't work out like that. It was interesting, but the information was not well presented and seemed to be
I also found the style to be somewhat circular. The first part of the book kept hinting a a tragic death, later in the book there was a lot of wringing of hands about her tragic death. I know it is hard to ratchet up the tension when you know the subject is deceased, but this circular referencing seemed to be superfluous. The whole bok had the feeling of a being padded out - almost like trying to write an essay with a minimum word count - and you've 1/3 short. There were several sections that seemed completely pointless - the fictional day in the life of a middle class woman being the most noticeable example. The author makes clear that none of the preceding 3 examples of a biography of Mrs Beeton can be considered unbiased - but I cant recommend this as being well constructed, even if there has been increased access to available material.
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lacking a sense of completeness. I'm still not entirely sure what happened to one of the sons. Mayson gets lots of coverage, having appointed himself as guardian of his parents' memory. Orchart is married, but then seems to vanish - if what became of him is mentioned, I don't recall it. I also found the style to be somewhat circular. The first part of the book kept hinting a a tragic death, later in the book there was a lot of wringing of hands about her tragic death. I know it is hard to ratchet up the tension when you know the subject is deceased, but this circular referencing seemed to be superfluous. The whole bok had the feeling of a being padded out - almost like trying to write an essay with a minimum word count - and you've 1/3 short. There were several sections that seemed completely pointless - the fictional day in the life of a middle class woman being the most noticeable example. The author makes clear that none of the preceding 3 examples of a biography of Mrs Beeton can be considered unbiased - but I cant recommend this as being well constructed, even if there has been increased access to available material.
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LibraryThing member japaul22
This is a biography that I picked up because of a group read happening here on LT. I had never heard of Mrs. Beeton - I'd be curious to know if any of you (especially the Brits!) have. Isabella Beeton was a Victorian woman who is known for her "Book of Household Management". Isabella's husband was
There has been much controversy about Beeton's life and writing. The Book of Household Management is often blamed for the much-maligned state of British cooking (i.e. boiling vegetables for hours at a time) and there is also the fact that people think of "Mrs. Beeton" as a middle age mother of many and expert at running a house and cooking, when in fact, Isabella Beeton was in her early 20s, had no living children and probably never cooked the majority of the included recipes. To write the book, she rewrote or sometimes directly plagiarized from other cookbooks and housekeeping books.
The most interesting part of this book for me was the exploration of Victorian middle class life through Isabella's life. Everything from rising and falling through the middle classes, courtship, marriage, home life, food eaten, clothes worn, and the ravages of syphilis is explored. As well, publishing and copyrights are integral to this book which I found very interesting.
Reading this book came at a good time for me since I was reading Dickens' Bleak House at the same time. It was entertaining and easy to read.
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a publisher and she wrote for his magazines and wrote this book as well which has been edited and republished countless times and is in fact still in print. Isabella Beeton's name may be long-lived, but as the title states, she had an all to short life, dying in her late 20s most likely of syphilis contracted from her husband.There has been much controversy about Beeton's life and writing. The Book of Household Management is often blamed for the much-maligned state of British cooking (i.e. boiling vegetables for hours at a time) and there is also the fact that people think of "Mrs. Beeton" as a middle age mother of many and expert at running a house and cooking, when in fact, Isabella Beeton was in her early 20s, had no living children and probably never cooked the majority of the included recipes. To write the book, she rewrote or sometimes directly plagiarized from other cookbooks and housekeeping books.
The most interesting part of this book for me was the exploration of Victorian middle class life through Isabella's life. Everything from rising and falling through the middle classes, courtship, marriage, home life, food eaten, clothes worn, and the ravages of syphilis is explored. As well, publishing and copyrights are integral to this book which I found very interesting.
Reading this book came at a good time for me since I was reading Dickens' Bleak House at the same time. It was entertaining and easy to read.
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Awards
Andre Simon Award (Winner — 2005)