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A review by dee2799d
The Short Life and Long Times of Mrs. Beeton: The First Domestic Goddess by Kathryn Hughes
3.0
Never read The Book of Household Management, although I might have seen it mentioned in books, so I didn't have the same expectation British people have when seeing the name Mrs Beeton. I picked this up mostly to read up on the Victorian era middle class and on that it doesn't necessarily disappoint. Kathryn Hughes focuses not only on Isabella Beeton and her husband Sam, but also their families. Could be a bit of a slog to go through, especially since we start from their grandparents before we even get to the meat of the story, but in the right frame of mind and curiosity it's actually interesting stuff.
Had this book for ages and didn't get past Isabella's childhood, but after watching documentaries about Victorian life and in particular the lives of servants, I wanted to know more about the woman who wrote the often quoted Book of Household Management and what she really thought. So I gave the book another go. This time more successfully--like I said, right frame of mind and curiosity.
Some of the things Hughes brings up in the end of the book regarding--I don't want to call them scandals, but I guess we can say detraction about Mrs Beeton is that 1, she ruined British cuisine and 2, she plagiariased most of her cooking instructions from other writers, namely Elizabeth Acton (who as Hughes points out, isn't the only cookbook writer Mrs Beeton borrows from). In response to this, Hughes points out Mrs Beeton's role in 'ruining' British cuisine was only to solidify and perpetuate bad cooking practises (a lot of which resulting from the problems about produce the Victorians were facing at the time). She doesn't defend Mrs Beeton so much from the plagiarism implications although most cookbooks are pretty much written the same way.
Anyway, what I wanted to ask though is: how can a woman who only plagiarised the cooking instructions in her book have ruined British cuisine?? If she copied Acton by the letter, I don't see how she's to be blamed for cooking vegetables for 2 hours. It's one or the other, please.
But that's probably sophistry.
The thing is, Mrs Beeton didn't live long enough and there weren't enough accounts of her for us to get the real picture of who she actually was, but Kathryn Hughes gives us something to work with.
Had this book for ages and didn't get past Isabella's childhood, but after watching documentaries about Victorian life and in particular the lives of servants, I wanted to know more about the woman who wrote the often quoted Book of Household Management and what she really thought. So I gave the book another go. This time more successfully--like I said, right frame of mind and curiosity.
Some of the things Hughes brings up in the end of the book regarding--I don't want to call them scandals, but I guess we can say detraction about Mrs Beeton is that 1, she ruined British cuisine and 2, she plagiariased most of her cooking instructions from other writers, namely Elizabeth Acton (who as Hughes points out, isn't the only cookbook writer Mrs Beeton borrows from). In response to this, Hughes points out Mrs Beeton's role in 'ruining' British cuisine was only to solidify and perpetuate bad cooking practises (a lot of which resulting from the problems about produce the Victorians were facing at the time). She doesn't defend Mrs Beeton so much from the plagiarism implications although most cookbooks are pretty much written the same way.
Anyway, what I wanted to ask though is: how can a woman who only plagiarised the cooking instructions in her book have ruined British cuisine?? If she copied Acton by the letter, I don't see how she's to be blamed for cooking vegetables for 2 hours. It's one or the other, please.
But that's probably sophistry.
The thing is, Mrs Beeton didn't live long enough and there weren't enough accounts of her for us to get the real picture of who she actually was, but Kathryn Hughes gives us something to work with.