Not the Victorian matron of popular imagination, Isabella Beeton was just twenty-on when she began the book that made her a household name. The Book of Household Management was written after she had just six months experience of running a home-and this is no mansion, but a suburban semi shared with her husband and one maid. In this warm, artful and expert account of her short life (she died aged just twenty-eight), Kathryn Hughes uncovers startling new material that shows Isabella Beeton struggling with every kind of trouble - bankruptcy, sexual scandal and a bitter family feud that would last over a century- so revealing the chasm between the public and private lives of this, the original icon of domestic bliss. Paperback Ed 2006
No reviews found