Saturday, March 14, 2009

It's growing!

my collection of Mrs Beeton books that is...

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I just acquired this darling copy of Mrs Beeton's Cookery book. This time it was my mother-in-law who supplied the goods... she was showing it to me knowing that I have the other book Actually, she thought I had the same book. I asked if she would leave it to me in her will... so she just gave it to me, although I guess technically it should still belong to Gran in case she wants to pickle anything in the nursing home. (Apparently the sister-in-law gets to have Gran's recipe collection instead.) So this is my husband's Gran's copy of Mrs Beeton... allegedly again given as a wedding present.

However, here I come across the same quandary as I have with my nana's copy. It appears to be a lot older than a wedding present would suggest. This one seems even older than the All about Cookery, and a quick google gives it an approximate date of early 1900s to 1910ish. All very puzzling.

And, intriguingly, this book has lots of different recipes to the other one. Some things that were popular when this book was printed had evidently fallen by the way side by the time All about Cookery was published.

So I'm looking forward to even more adventures with Mrs Beeton.

2 comments:

Danae said...

Hi, I just came across your blog (link hopping from somewhere... is it bad that I can't remember where?) and I think it's great :)

Your puzzling conundrum with the dates of the books may or may not be sold as follows - it is only recently that people have become a little snobbish (for lack of a better word) about gifts being 'new', the books were probably used already when they were given as gifts - especially as books used to be a much more expensive item than they are now.

That may not be the answer, but it is something to consider :)

Anyway, a nice blog! I will be back.

weenie_elise said...

thanks for coming by..


yes, I have thought about that, and it seems very plausible... also if someone had the book and was 'passing it down' so to speak as a present