The Marvellous Mrs Beeton, with Sophie Dahl, BBC Two, review

Mrs B compiled her great opus when she was only 23; it was an instant hit. The Book of Household Management sold 60,000 copies in its first year, outselling Great Expectations, and was avidly read by the burgeoning middle-class wives and mothers desperate to learn how to cook, choose servants, budget and dress. Yet only four years after its publication Isabella Beeton died, aged 28, having caught puerperal fever after the birth of her fourth child. In her short life she had seen two of her children die, one aged three, the other three months; she suffered several miscarriages. Sam, having gone bankrupt while Isabella was alive, died aged 47 ? possibly from syphilis, which he passed to his wife.

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