In 1861 twenty-four-year-old Isabella Beeton and her husband published an enormously popular book of advice for middle-class women. The book (1,112 pages) instructed women how to cook, treat their servants, and rear their children. Writing the book, of course, fell outside of the role she advised women to play. She died before her thirtieth birthday.

Preface.
I must frankly own, that if I had known, beforehand, that this book would have cost me the labour which it has, I should never have been courageous enough to commence it. What moved me, in the first instance, to attempt a work like this, was the discomfort and suffering which I had seen brought upon men and women by household mismanagement. I have always thought that there is no more fruitful source of family discontent than a housewife's badly-cooked dinners and untidy ways. Men...