Victorian secrets

And now for the shocking revelation in Kathryn Hughes's biography ``The Short Life and Long Times of Mrs. Beeton " : It is that a household manual published in 1861 is still of use, not only to housekeepers, but to sociologists, economists, food analysts , and neo-feminists. Compiled amid the social turmoil that accompanied the Industrial Revolution, Beeton's book contains powerful subtexts about the class system, consumerism, the safety factor in food sources , and the rights and duties of married women. Magazine publishers might also want to study the acuteness with which the Beetons kept their many publications responsive to opposing and shifting public opinion and taste.

The hefty original volume is therefore worth reading. But for those lacking the patience to slog through hundreds of pages of recipes for such dishes as calf's- head soup and dry pigs' cheeks, Hughes has distilled the subtext of the book as well as of the Beetons' and their readers' lives.

Isabella Mayson was the eldest of 21 children in a blended and upwardly mobile family who disappointed her fond parents by falling in love with a headstrong young publisher. They were educating her, in music and foreign languages, to take the next step up to idle mid-Victorian ladyhood. Samuel Beeton came from no better origins than their own, and it did not escape their notice, as it did Isabella's, that he was also a litigious four-flusher headed for bankruptcy.