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Isabella Mary Beeton (née Mayson; 14 March 1836 – 6 February 1865), known as Mrs Beeton, was an English journalist, editor and writer. Her name is particularly associated with her first book, the 1861 work Mrs Beeton's Book of Household Management. She was born in London and, after schooling in Islington, north London, and Heidelberg, Germany, she married Samuel Orchart Beeton, an ambitious publisher and magazine editor.

In 1857, less than a year after the wedding, Beeton began writing for one of her husband's publications, The Englishwoman's Domestic Magazine. She translated French fiction and wrote the cookery column, though all the recipes were plagiarised from other works or sent in by the magazine's readers. In 1859 the Beetons launched a series of 48-page monthly supplements to The Englishwoman's Domestic Magazine; the 24 instalments were published in one volume as Mrs Beeton's Book of Household Management in October 1861, which sold 60,000 copies in the first year. Beeton was working on an abridged version of her book, which was to be titled The Dictionary of Every-Day Cookery, when she died of puerperal fever in February 1865 at the age of 28. She gave birth to four children, two of whom died in infancy, and had several miscarriages. Two of her biographers, Nancy Spain and Kathryn Hughes, posit the theory that Samuel had unknowingly contracted syphilis in a premarital liaison with a prostitute, and had unwittingly passed the disease on to his wife.

The Book of Household Management has been edited, revised and enlarged several times since Beeton's death and is still in print as at 2016. Food writers have stated that the subsequent editions of the work were far removed from and inferior to the original version. Several cookery writers, including Elizabeth David and Clarissa Dickson Wright, have criticised Beeton's work, particularly her use of other people's recipes. Others, such as the food writer Bee Wilson, consider the censure overstated, and that Beeton and her work should be thought extraordinary and admirable. Her name has become associated with knowledge and authority on Victorian cooking and home management, and the Oxford English Dictionary states that by 1891 the term Mrs Beeton had become used as a generic name for a domestic authority. She is also considered a strong influence in the building or shaping of a middle-class identity of the Victorian era.

Legacy

In May 1866, following a severe downturn in his financial fortunes, Samuel sold the rights to the Book of Household Management  to Ward, Lock and Tyler (later Ward Lock & Co).[19] The writer Nancy Spain, in her biography of Isabella, reports that, given the money the company made from the Beetons' work, "surely no man ever made a worse or more impractical bargain" than Samuel did.[92] In subsequent publications Ward Lock suppressed the details of the lives of the Beetons—especially the death of Isabella—in order to protect their investment by letting readers think she was still alive and creating recipes—what Hughes considers to be "intentional censorship".[93] Those later editions continued to make the connection to Beeton in what Beetham considers to be a "fairly ruthless marketing policy which was begun by Beeton but carried on vigorously by Ward, Lock, and Tyler".[43] Those subsequent volumes bearing Beeton's name became less reflective of the original.[43] Since its initial publication the Book of Household Management  has been issued in numerous hardback and paperback editions, translated into several languages and has never been out of print.

Beeton and her main work have been subjected to criticism over the course of the twentieth century. Elizabeth David complains of recipes that are "sometimes slapdash and misleading", although she acknowledges that Prosper Montagné's Larousse Gastronomique also contains errors.[12] The television cook Delia Smith admits she was puzzled "how on earth Mrs Beeton's book managed to utterly eclipse ... [Acton's] superior work",[95] while her fellow chef, Clarissa Dickson Wright, opines that "It would be unfair to blame any one person or one book for the decline of English cookery, but Isabella Beeton and her ubiquitous book do have a lot to answer for."[96] In comparison, the food writer Bee Wilson opines that disparaging Beeton's work was only a "fashionable" stance to take and that the cook's writing "simply makes you want to cook".[97] Christopher Driver, the journalist and food critic, suggests that the "relative stagnation and want of refinement in the indigenous cooking of Britain between 1880 and 1930" may instead be explained by the "progressive debasement under successive editors, revises and enlargers".[98] David comments that "when plain English cooks" were active in their kitchens, "they followed plain English recipes and chiefly those from the Mrs Beeton books or their derivatives".[99] Dickson Wright considers Beeton to be a "fascinating source of information" from a social history viewpoint,[100] and Aylett and Ordish consider the work to be "the best and most reliable guide for the scholar to the domestic history of the mid-Victorian era".

Despite the criticism, Clausen observes that "'Mrs. Beeton' has ... been for over a century the standard English cookbook, frequently outselling every other book but the Bible".[74] According to the Oxford English Dictionary, the term Mrs Beeton became used as a generic name for "an authority on cooking and domestic subjects" as early as 1891, and Beetham opines that "'Mrs. Beeton' became a trade mark, a brand name".[43] In a review by Gavin Koh published in a 2009 issue of The BMJ, Mrs Beeton's Book of Household Management was labelled a medical classic. In Beeton's "attempt to educate the average reader about common medical complaints and their management", Koh argues, "she preceded the family health guides of today".[104] Robin Wensley, a professor of strategic management, believes that Beeton's advice and guidance on household management can also be applied to business management, and her lessons on the subject have stood the test of time better than some of her advice on cooking or etiquette.

Following the radio broadcast of Meet Mrs. Beeton, a 1934 comedy in which Samuel was portrayed in an unflattering light,[m] and Mrs Beeton, a 1937 documentary,[n] Mayston Beeton worked with H. Montgomery Hyde to produce the biography Mr and Mrs Beeton, although completion and publication were delayed until 1951. In the meantime Nancy Spain published Mrs Beeton and her Husband in 1948, updated and retitled in 1956 to The Beeton Story. In the new edition Spain hinted at, but did not elucidate upon, on the possibility that Samuel contracted syphilis. Several other biographies followed, including from the historian Sarah Freeman, who wrote Isabella and Sam in 1977; Nown's Mrs Beeton: 150 Years of Cookery and Household Management, published on the 150th anniversary of Beeton's birthday, and Hughes's The Short Life and Long Times of Mrs Beeton, published in 2006.[37][108] Beeton was ignored by the Dictionary of National Biography for many years: while Acton was included in the first published volume of 1885, Beeton did not have an entry until 1993.

There have been several television broadcasts about Beeton. In 1970 Margaret Tyzack portrayed her in a solo performance written by Rosemary Hill,[110] in 2006 Anna Madeley played Beeton in a docudrama,[111] and Sophie Dahl presented a documentary, The Marvellous Mrs Beeton, in the same year.

The literary historian Kate Thomas sees Beeton as "a powerful force in the making of middle-class Victorian domesticity",[113] while the Oxford University Press, advertising an abridged edition of the Book of Household Management, considers Beeton's work a "founding text"[114] and "a force in shaping" the middle-class identity of the Victorian era.[115] Within that identity, the historian Sarah Richardson sees that one of Beeton's achievements was the integration of different threads of domestic science into one volume, which "elevat[ed] the middle-class female housekeeper's role ... placing it in a broader and more public context".[116] Nown quotes an unnamed academic who thought that "Mrs Beetonism has preserved the family as a social unit, and made social reforms a possibility",[117] while Nicola Humble, in her history of British food, sees The Book of Household Management  as "an engine for social change" which led to a "new cult of domesticity that was to play such a major role in mid-Victorian life".[118] Nown considers Beeton.

... a singular and remarkable woman, praised in her lifetime and later forgotten and ignored when a pride in light pastry ... were no longer considered prerequisites for womanhood. Yet in her lively, progressive way, she helped many women to overcome the loneliness of marriage and gave the family the importance it deserved. In the climate of her time she was brave, strong-minded and a tireless champion of her sisters everywhere.

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