The Short Life and Long Times of Mrs Beeton (review)

“The making of Mrs Beeton must go down as one of the most spectacular transformation scenes in Victorian domestic history,” claims historian Kathryn Hughes (158). The Short Life and Long Times of Mrs Beeton is the first full-length study of Isabella and Samuel Beeton in nearly 30 years, and the first to benefit from unrestricted access to both family papers and public records. Hughes corrects and significantly fleshes out the stories told by previous biographers Sarah Freeman (1977) and Nancy Spain (1948 and Nancy Spain (1956). In addition to interesting accounts of the origins and publication history of the best-known and most enduring Beeton publication, Mrs Beeton’s Book of Household Management, readers will find a wealth of information about many of the Beeton periodicals, especially the Englishwoman’s Domestic Magazine, Boy’s Own Magazine , the Queen, and Myra’s Journal of Dress and Fashion, as well as some discussion of Mayson and Louie Beeton’s (the son and daughter-in-law of Sam and Isabella) periodicals Hearth and Home and Home Chat. Hughes also devotes significant space to Matilda (“Myra”) Browne, who became Sam’s personal and professional helpmeet after Isabella’s death.

Both Sam and Isabella grew up with the printing trades. Sam worked for a paper merchant in his teens, became a partner in a printing and binding firm in his early twenties, and had his first professional success with pirated editions of Uncle Tom’s Cabin. Along the way he became friends with Frederick Greenwood, who was to edit several of his periodicals, and with James Wade, who became his printer. In 1852, Sam launched the Englishwoman’s Domestic Magazine, which Hughes describes as “the publication that most surely shaped the magazines we read today” (162), and in 1855 Boy’s Own. Isabella’s unusual upbringing as one of a family of 21 children living in the Grandstand at Epsom Downs is part of the standard mythology, but Hughes point out that her stepfather Henry Dorling was not only the Clerk of the Course, but also a second-generation printer of racing lists for the Derby. Thus, living in the Grandstand not only give Isabella an early exposure to both private and public catering on a large scale (experiences that render slightly less astonishing the picnics for forty offered up blithely in the Book of Household Management), but it also initiated her into the workings of the printing industry. Hughes also notes that Isabella was very well educated for her time: in addition to attending boarding school in England, she spent three years at a rigorous school in Heidelberg.

Sam and Isabella married in 1856 and set up house with the help of free furnishings offered by (or wheedled out of) advertisers in Boy’s Own. Isabella entered into her husband’s business quite soon, contributing articles to the Englishwoman’s Domestic Magazine in 1857, and in 1860 becoming the “editress” of a relaunched, more luxurious version of the magazine. The shilling edition came complete with the innovative paper dress patterns; subscribers to the 6d version could send off for the patterns at an extra charge. Simultaneously with assuming more responsibility at the magazine, Isabella was also collecting and testing recipes for the Book of Household Management, which was released in monthly installments from 1859–61. Hughes provides details about the sources for recipes and also debunks the notion that Isabella actually tested all of them: she “would have had to cook two separate dishes a day over the thirty-eight months from August 1857 to December 1860” (220), she observes, a feat that even the most ardent advocate of labor-saving devices would have found difficult to do—even if not simultaneously raising small children, writing a book, and editing a magazine.

Hughes’s assessment of the impact of the Book of Household Management is apt. Isabella “did something unique with the material that she borrowed. She turned it...