Literally a household word in Victorian America, Eliza Leslie taught generations of American women how to cook, behave themselves in public, and clean their houses. She also entertained them with fiction depicting ludicrously pretentious imposers upon well-bred American hospitality and tales outlining the right and wrong ways for girls to be educated and for young women to earn lasting respect from eligible bachelors. Best known for her cookbooks and incredibly detailed instructions on every conceivable topic related to conventional women's behavior and activities in the mid nineteenth century, Leslie's short stories, which appeared regularly in Godey's Lady's Book, ruthlessly ridiculed improprieties and introduced to American literature comic female figures whose character flaws are revealed through minute descriptions of dress, coiffure, or household dishabille.

Her only novel, Amelia; or, A Young Lady's Vicissitudes (1848), a Cinderella story, perfectly exemplifies a common thread running through Leslie's complete corpus of writing: American...