Appearances

This interesting piece of social history, published in 1899, appears to have been the first non-fiction work by Teresa Praga (d.1920), the wife of a portrait painter and miniaturist, who also published novels. Her later output included books on cookery, housekeeping and dress, many with the emphasis on 'easy' (Easy French Sweets for English Cooks, for example). Like Jane Panton (several of whose books on lifestyle are also reissued in this series), Praga is writing for middle-class wives with not much money, and aspirations to gracious living. Appearances (subtitled How to Keep Them Up on a Limited Income) is presented as autobiography: how a newly married woman, on a very restricted income but used to - and liking - being 'waited on', manages a house. With detailed descriptions of finances, menus, the duties of servants, and other minutiae, this is a light-hearted account of late Victorian housekeeping.