‘The Alpha and the Omega’

Abstract

The author analyses two well-known cookery and conduct books published in England during the nineteenth century -- Modern Cookery by Eliza Acton, first published in 1845, and Mrs Beeton’s Book of Household Management by Isabella Beeton, published in 1861, as well as a themed book targeted at an ethnic minority, The Jewish Manual, edited anonymously by a woman but attributed to Lady Judith Montefiore and published in 1846 -- and argues that English cookery and conduct books written by women during the nineteenth-century challenged traditional gender and social boundaries and undermined women’s submissive image by presenting modes of women’s empowerment at personal and interpersonal levels.