The Campaign for Domestic Happiness

Isabella Beeton was born in London in 1836, one of twenty-one brothers and sisters. Between 1859-1861, Beeton wrote articles on cooking and household management for her husband's publications. The collection of these articles became the single volume, The Book of Household Management, a guide to all aspects of running a household in Victorian Britain that included not only recipes, home-made remedies and how to deal with servants' pay but also smaller yet surprising subjects such as violence, cruelty and death. It remains a classic piece of domestic literature, providing us with invaluable insight into the Victorian household. Beeton died just four years after its publication at the age of twenty-eight.