Mrs Beeton's Book of Household Management

Beeton's Book of Household Management

Title page
Author	Isabella Beeton
Language	English
Subject	Cookery
Genre	Manual
Publisher	S. O. Beeton Publishing
Publication date	1861

Mrs Beeton's Book of Household Management, also published as Mrs Beeton's Cookery Book, is an extensive guide to running a household in Victorian Britain, edited by Isabella Beeton and first published as a book in 1861. It had previously been published in parts. It was originally entitled Beeton's Book of Household Management, as one of the series of guide-books published by her husband, Samuel Beeton. The recipes were highly structured, in contrast to earlier cookbooks. It was illustrated with many monochrome and colour plates.

Although Mrs Beeton died in 1865, the book continued to be a best-seller. The first editions after her death contained an obituary notice, but this was removed from later editions, allowing readers to imagine that every word was written by an experienced Mrs Beeton personally. This fiction was expressed in one of Arthur Conan Doyle's novels, where a character declares: "Mrs Beeton must have been the finest housekeeper in the world, therefore Mr. Beeton must have been the happiest and most comfortable man".

Many of the recipes were copied from the most successful cookery books of the day including Eliza Acton's Modern Cookery for Private Families, Elizabeth Raffald's The Experienced English Housekeeper, Marie-Antoine Carême's Le Pâtissier royal parisien, Hannah Glasse's The Art of Cookery Made Plain and Easy, Maria Eliza Rundell's A New System of Domestic Cookery, and the works of Charles Elmé Francatelli. This practice of Mrs Beeton's has in modern times repeatedly been described as plagiarism.