KATHRYN HUGHES
The Short Life & Long Times of Mrs Beeton
For my parents, Anne and John HughesAgain, again
CONTENTS
PROLOGUE: ‘A Tub-Like Lady in Black’
CHAPTER ONE: ‘Heavy, Cold and Wet Soil’
CHAPTER TWO: ‘Chablis to Oysters’
CHAPTER THREE: ‘Paper Without End’
CHAPTER FOUR: ‘The Entire Management of Me’
CHAPTER FIVE: ‘Crockery and Carpets’
CHAPTER SIX: ‘A Most Agreeable Mélange’
CHAPTER EIGHT: ‘The Alpha and the Omega’
CHAPTER NINE: ‘Perfect Fashion and Elegance’
CHAPTER TEN: ‘Her Hand Has Lost Its Cunning’
CHAPTER ELEVEN: ‘Spinnings About Town’
CHAPTER TWELVE: ‘The Best Cookery Book in the World’
CHAPTER THIRTEEN: ‘A Beetonian Reverie’
On the Beeton Track by Kathryn Hughes
If You Loved This, You Might Like …
PROLOGUE ‘A Tub-Like Lady in Black’
ON BOXING DAY 1932 the National Portrait Gallery opened an exhibition of its new acquisitions to the public. There were twenty-three likenesses on display, all of which were to be added to the nation’s permanent portrait collection of the great and the good. Cecil Rhodes, ‘South African Statesman,