The Short Life and Long Times of Mrs. Beeton

Before Martha and Nigella — heck, before Fannie Farmer — Isabella Beeton authored the Victorian housewife’s bible, the starchy 1861 Book of Household Management. In The Short Life and Long Times of Mrs. Beeton, a lively and authoritative bio of ”the first domestic goddess,” Kathryn Hughes excavates Beeton from beneath a century and a half of mythology. The woman who emerges is an industrious journalist who casually plagiarized much of her work, and may be responsible for such egregious British traditions as soggy boiled parsnips. According to Hughes, she was also a tragic figure: Her husband probably infected her with syphilis on their honeymoon and she died at 28.