Mrs. Isabella Beeton
March 12, 1836 - January 1865
(from Wikipedia: The Free Encylopedia: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Isabella_Beeton)
Isabella Mary Mayson, universally known as Mrs. Beeton, was the author of Mrs. Beeton's Book of Household Management and is the most famous cookery writer in British history. Isabella was born at 24 Milk Street, Cheapside, London. Her father Benjamin Mason died when she was young and her mother Elizabeth Jerram remarried a Henry Dorling. She was sent to school in Heidelberg in Germany and afterward returned to her stepfather's home in Epsom.
On a visit to London she was introduced to Samuel Orchard Beeton, a publisher of books and popular magazines, and on July 10, 1856 they were married. She began to write articles on cooking and household management for her husband's publications and between 1859 and 1861 she wrote a monthly supplement to The Englishwoman’s Domestic Magazine. The supplements were subsequently published in October 1861 as a single volume entitled - The Book of Household Management Comprising information for the Mistress, Housekeeper, Cook, Kitchen-Maid, Butler, Footman, Coachman, Valet, Upper and Under House-Maids, Lady’s-Maid, Maid-of-all-Work, Laundry-Maid, Nurse and Nurse-Maid, Monthly Wet and Sick Nurses, etc. etc. – also Sanitary, Medical, & Legal Memoranda: with a History of the Origin, Properties, and Uses of all Things Connected with Home Life and Comfort.
Published in 1861, Mrs Beeton's Book of Household Management was a guide to all aspects of running a household in Victorian Britain. Its 2751 entries include tips on how to deal with servants' pay and children's health, and above all a wealth of cooking advice, instructions and recipes. It was an immediate bestseller, running to millions of copies within just a few years. It contained advice on fashion, child-care, animal husbandry, poisons, the management of servants, science, religion, industrialism and a very large number of recipes (it is often called Mrs Beeton's Cookbook). Of the 1,112 pages over 900 contained recipes. Most of the recipes were illustrated with coloured engravings and it was the first book to show recipes in a format that is still used today. It is claimed that many of the recipes were actually plagiarised from earlier writers (including Eliza Acton).
Perhaps surprisingly, author Isabella Beeton was just 21 years old when she started working on the book, and she died before she was thirty.
The book gives a charming and historically significant insight into Victorian domestic management. Although its entries have little practical relevance today the name "Mrs Beeton" still has iconic status in Britain: most people recognize it and know its connotations, although very few have actually come into contact with the book itself. One of Isabella Beeton's most famous pronouncements, "first catch your hare", in a recipe for jugged hare, is widely known and quoted.
Today's superstar chefs (especially Delia Smith) might be seen as the direct descendents of Mrs Beeton, who saw as they did the need to provide reassuring advice on culinary matters for the British middle classes, the Industrial Revolution having sealed the demise of traditional rural cooking skills.
After giving birth to her fourth child in January 1865, Isabella contracted puerperal fever and died a week later at the age of 28. She is buried at West Norwood Cemetery under a simple headstone.