Isabella Beeton
Isabella Mary Beeton was an English journalist, editor and writer. Her name is associated with her first book, the 1861 work Mrs Beeton’s Book of Household Management. She gave birth to four children, two of whom died in infancy, and had several miscarriages. She died of puerperal fever in February 1865 at the age of 28.
About Isabella Beeton in brief
Isabella Mary Beeton was an English journalist, editor and writer. Her name is associated with her first book, the 1861 work Mrs Beeton’s Book of Household Management. She died of puerperal fever in February 1865 at the age of 28. She gave birth to four children, two of whom died in infancy, and had several miscarriages. She is considered a strong influence in the building or shaping of a middle-class identity of the Victorian era. Her work has been criticised for its use of other people’s recipes. Others, such as the food writer Bee Wilson, consider the censure overstated, and that Beeton and her work should be thought extraordinary and admirable. Isabella Mayson was born on 14 March 1836 in Marylebone, London. She was the eldest of three daughters to Benjamin Mayson, a linen factor, and his wife Elizabeth. Her father died when Isabella was four years old, and Elizabeth, unable to cope with raising the children on her own while maintaining Benjamin’s business, sent her two elder daughters to live with relatives. In 1851 Isabella went to school in Heidelberg, Germany, accompanied by her stepsister Jane Dorling. She had returned to Epsom by the summer of 1854 and took further lessons in pastry-making from a local baker. Around 1854 Isabella began a relationship with Samuel Orchart Beeton. His father still lived in the same family home as the Maysons—Samuel’s father still ran Dolphin Tavern in the Milk Street area of Epsom.
The couple announced their engagement in June 1855 and took place at St Martin’s Church, Epsom, in July the following year. Samuel was the first British publisher of Harriet Beecher’s Uncle Tom’s Cabin in 1852 and had also released two innovative and pioneering journals: The Englishwoman’s Domestic Magazine in 18 52 and the Boys’ Own magazine in 1855. He died of syphilis in 1857, and Isabella became pregnant with her fourth child, who was born in 1858. She also became proficient in the piano and excelled in French and German; she also gained knowledge and experience in making pastry. The family, including Elizabeth’s mother, moved to Surrey and over the next twenty years Henry and Elizabeth had a further thirteen children. Three years after Benjamin’s death Elizabeth married Henry Dorling, a widower with four children and had been granted residence within the racecourse grounds. The couple entered into extensive correspondence, which Isabella signed as ‘Fatty’—in which she signed her letters as ‘Fatty’—in 1855, and they announced their marriage in June the same year. In October 1859 the Beetons launched a series of 48-page monthly supplements to The English woman’s domestic magazine. The 24 instalments were published in one volume in October 1861, which sold 60,000 copies in the first year. The book has been edited, revised and enlarged several times since Beeton’s death.
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This page is based on the article Isabella Beeton published in Wikipedia (as of Nov. 11, 2020) and was automatically summarized using artificial intelligence.
