OP: Isabella and Sam: The Story of Mrs. Beeton

Coward, McCann and Geoghegan, Inc., New York, 1978. Hardcover. Near Fine. First US edition.

Isabella Beeton (1836–1865) wrote one of Britain’s bestselling, longest-lasting domestic cookery books of the 19th century, Mrs. Beeton's Book of Household Management. It started as a serial in her publisher husband Sam Beeton’s The Englishwoman's Domestic Magazine and was first issued in book form in 1861 when the author was just 23.

Beeton’s, as it would come to be affectionately known, sold 60,000 copies in its first year and millions more shortly thereafter. Dozens of revisions and new editions followed, as it remained almost continuously in print into the 2020s.

The book, especially in revision, had little to do with the real Isabella Beeton after its first few years, as she died young at only 28, and, in fact, Sam Beeton sold the rights in 1866. Though every British household spoke her name, few might’ve known she was a real person. It was only in the middle of the 20th century that biographers began to take interest in telling her story.

Academic and cookbook author Sarah Freeman was one of many to take on the mantle of writing about this fascinating young person in Isabella and Sam (1977). With keen historical analysis, and occasionally barbed commentary, Freeman paints a compelling picture of how the eldest child of 21 and the young wife of a renowned publisher became a legend.

Ours is a Fine copy of the 1978 first US printing. Hardcover.