The Book of Household Management
COMPRISING INFORMATION FOR 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, and Legal Memoranda; with a History of the Origin, Properties, and Uses of All Things connected with Home Life and Comfort. BY MRS ISABELLA BEETON. ENTIRELY NEW EDITION, REVISED AND CORRECTED, WITH NEW COLOURED ENGRAVINGS. TWO HUNDRED AND SEVENTY-SEVENTH THOUSAND. LONDON: WARD, LOCK, AND TYLER, WARWICK HOUSE, PATERNOSTER ROW.
Thick 8vo. The Paste-down and 1fep packed and verso of Half title with advertisements .[1] Frontispiece. Tissue guard. Title page. Verso with advertisements. (1)iv Preface to the first and new editions. (1)vi General Contents. (1)viii-xxxv Analytical Index. xxxvi-xl Index to Engravings. (1) List of 12 Coloured Engravings. 5p Advertisements. [1]2-1139. [1 A staggering 45 pages of Advertisements. The back paste-down and end-paper with advertisements. With the original green cloth boards. The sympathetically re-laid maroon spine with gilt-tooling. Internally very clean and bright. A handsome copy.
- This copy is quite different in appearance to the previous four issues of the first edition. Although also having 12 plates, they are very different, and in the book all available space is filled with advertisements, (an unbelievable 5 pages at the front and 45 pages at the back) giving a clue to the aggressive marketing by Ward, Lock & Tyler who knew full well the popularity of Isabella's literary legacy. By 1890 over half a million copies of 'The Book of Household Management' had been sold with no sign of demand abating, assuring its reputation as the publishing phenomenon of the nineteenth century. One assumes Isabella and Samuel ran out of the original plates completely, before this publication of the new and very different corrected second edition of 1869.
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Antiquarian category
ref number:
11068