– 9 – A u g u s t 2 0 2 2 “Universally Acknowledged To Be The Best Cook Book Ever Written” (Quayle) 8. BEETON, Isabella. Mrs. Beeton’s Household Management. London, 1861. Very thick octavo, modern threequarter straight-grain burgundy morocco. $3800. Scarce first edition of this landmark of cookery and home economics, richly illustrated with a chromolithographic frontispiece, title page, and 12 plates, each depicting multiple dishes. First published in 1861, Beeton’s Household Management was “an immediate bestseller and went into many editions well into the 20th century” (Craig 8). Its popularity “rested on its quality, especially the combination of clear structure and precise detail. Recipes, for example, were arranged alphabetically in sections, with ingredients, prices, weights, and cooking times all precisely stated, on the basis of tests carried out by the author in her own kitchen… For Isabella Beeton, a people’s ‘way of taking their meals, as well as their way of treating women’ were marks of civilization” (DNB). “As the compiler of what is universally acknowledged to be the best cookbook ever written, she will continue to be read as avidly into the 21st century as she has been in the 19th and 20th” (Quayle, 247). First issue, with the Bouverie Street address on the illustrated title page (Cagle 561). Frontispiece, title pages and plate opposite page 145 mildly foxed, text and remaining plates generally quite clean, binding fine and attractive.
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