The Experienced English Housekeeper

Elizabeth Raffald; Roy Shipperbottom (intro.)

ISBN 10: 1870962133 / ISBN 13: 9781870962131

Published by Southover Press, Lewes, 1997

About this Item

1st printing (1997). 213pp. Near Fine/Near Fine copy, publisher's handwritten compliments slip laid in, now preserved in mylar jacket protector.

Seller Inventory # 022291

Bibliographic Details

• Title: The Experienced English Housekeeper
• Publisher: Southover Press, Lewes
• Publication Date: 1997
• Language: English
• ISBN 10: 1870962133
• ISBN 13: 9781870962131
• Binding: Hardcover
• Edition: 1st Edition
• Condition: Near Fine
• Dust Jacket Condition: Near Fine
• Seller catalogs:
  • Cookery

About this title

Synopsis

FIrst published in 1769. The introduction by Roy Shipperbottom is the fruit of extensive research into the life of the extraordinary Elizabeth Raffald, a pioneer among women entrepreneurs - she had a cooked meat shop, wrote the first-ever street directory and ran an employment agency for servants. This cookery book became a bestseller, and made public the then secret art of confectionary.

About the Author

Mrs. Raffald (1733-1781) was an unusual and energetic entrepreneur. Not only was she a brilliant cook and housekeeper (she worked in several households, the last of which, Arley Hall in Cheshire, was where she met and married the gardener, John Raffald), but she also ran a successful shop and catering business in Manchester, compiled the first street directory there, started the first servant's registry, used newspaper advertising to some effect to publicise her various businesses, and ran the King's Head in Salford while coping with a family of daughters and a profligate husband. At the King's Head she started compiling recipes, training young ladies and eventually published her book which was an instant success. Queen Victoria passed off several of her receipts as her own, and countless family recipe books include at least some of them. Roy Shipperbottom was born in Bolton, Lancashire, in 1930 and died in Laon, France in just before the publication of Southover's edition of The Experienced English Housekeeper for which he provided the introduction. He pursued careers in building, bookbinding and academia, retiring as a senior lecturer in humanities from North Manchester College in 1982. By that time, the history of food had become his main interest and Elizabeth Raffald, his passion. He spent twenty years researching her life and work from sources in Lancashire and Yorkshire and at Arley Hall where she was housekeeper.