Who was Mrs. Beeton? Mrs. Beeton was Isabella Beeton. If you are British, you have probably heard her name in reference to all of the household management and recipe books that were released in her name. Even if you are not British, there is a strong chance that you have heard of her.
I say that these books were released in Mrs. Beeton’s name because she actually died when she was only 28 years old, and her husband went on to produce many books with her name on the cover. He was a very effective businessman, and once he realized how popular the books were, he went on to make her name into a brand name.
Isabella Beeton was famous for being able to manage a household with many people in it and for making meals for large numbers of people. She actually learned how to do all of this through necessity. She was born Isabella Mayson in 1836, into a lower middle class family and was one of four children. Her father died when she was only four years old, and her mother remarried a man who had four children of his own. After her second marriage, Isabella’s mother and step-father went on to have a further 13 children, bringing the grand total up to 21. They were not tremendously well-off and, as the eldest child, Isabella had a lot of practice managing the household and preparing meals for all of the children.
She met her husband, Samuel Beeton in 1854, and he was five years older than her. He was an established publisher of books and magazines, and Isabella began to write for his publications, mainly “The Englishwoman’s Domestic Magazine”. She wrote about keeping a household and she also wrote compendiums of recipes. She didn’t create the recipes herself, but copied from many other sources. Copyright was not protected so strictly back then.
The Beeton’s decided to take a couple of years’ worth of installments from the magazine and turn them into a book. The book, today known as “Mrs. Beeton’s Book of Household Management” had a much less catchy name when it was released in 1861. It was called “The Book of Household Management, comprising information for the Mistress, Housekeeper, Cook, Kitchen-Maid, Butler, Footman, Coachman, Valet, Upper and Under House-Maids, Lady’s-Maid, Maid-of-all-Work, Laundry-Maid, Nurse and Nurse-Maid, Monthly Wet and Sick Nurses, etc. etc. – also Sanitary, Medical, & Legal Memoranda: with a History of the Origin, Properties, and Uses of all Things Connected with Home Life and Comfort.” The book had 1,112 pages, 900 recipes, and only one of those recipes, one for soup, was actually created by Isabella Beeton. She might not have come up with the recipes herself, but she did revolutionize the way they were structured. We are so used to seeing the list of ingredients at the top of a recipe that we could easily think that was the only way to present it, but putting the ingredients first was Mrs. Beeton’s idea. Before her, ingredients were just mentioned in passing, or sometimes not even included at all.
Not all of the recipes were good though and Mrs. Beeton was very against “foreign” food. That included pasta, tomatoes, mangoes, lobster, garlic, and even potatoes. She recommended that pasta needed to be boiled for an hour and forty-five minutes.
The book became instantly popular and 60,000 copies were sold in its very first year of print. The content has increased since then, and the title has changed, but the book has never been out of print in over 160 years.
Unfortunately, a few years after the publication of the book that would make her famous and her husband rich, Isabella Beeton died. She was only 28 years old. She died the day after giving birth to her son from a bacterial infection. After she died, the book grew in popularity. Early editions contained an obituary to her at the front, but that was quickly removed. Her husband was a canny salesman, and he realized there was more benefit in having people think Mrs. Beaton was still alive.
After a few years, he included her name on the cover of the book, which only served to increase sales. He went on to produce any other books under her name, but Mrs. Beeton’s Book of Household Management has always been the most popular. It is still in print, but it has changed somewhat. The current edition has over 2,000 pages. And this is what I learned today.
Sources
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mrs._Beeton%27s_Book_of_Household_Management
https://www.bbc.co.uk/history/historic_figures/beeton_mrs.shtml
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Isabella_Beeton
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