Mrs. Beeton

Isabella Mary Beeton (1836–1865), born Isabella Mayson in London and raised at Epsom racecourse, where her stepfather was clerk of the course, married the publisher Samuel Beeton at twenty and began writing on cookery and household matters for his Englishwoman's Domestic Magazine. The articles grew into The Book of Household Management, issued in parts from 1859 and as a book in 1861, which sold two million copies by 1868 and made Mrs Beeton a household name that outlived her by more than a century. She collected recipes from readers and borrowed freely from earlier writers. She died of puerperal fever at twenty-eight.