The American Frugal Housewife [Paperback]

Lydia Maria Child (Author)

Book Description

Publication Date: June 7, 1999

Along with simply written recipes for roasting a pig and preparing corned beef, hasty pudding, carrot pie, buffalo tongue, and scores of other dishes, this fascinating book, with its lively and direct style, also offered 19th-century readers suggestions for treating chilblains and dysentery, cleaning white kid gloves, educating one's daughters, and much more.

Editorial Reviews

About the Author

<DIV>Lydia Maria Child (1802-1880) was an American abolitionist, women's rights activist, Indian rights activist, novelist, and journalist. Her 1833 book An Appeal in Favor of That Class of Americans Called Africans was the first anti-slavery work printed in America in book form, while her American Frugal Housewife, first published in 1828, was a wildly popular nineteenth-century manual for homemakers. Other works from Child, who is best remembered for her Thanksgiving poem "Over the River and Through the Woods," include The Mother's Book, The Girl's Own Book, and The Family Nurse.</DIV> --This text refers to an alternate Paperback edition.

Product Details

• Paperback: 160 pages
• Publisher: Dover Publications; First, thus edition (June 7, 1999)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 048640840X
• ISBN-13: 978-0486408408
• Product Dimensions: 5.4 x 0.5 x 8.5 inches
• Shipping Weight: 6.2 ounces (View shipping rates and policies)
• Average Customer Review: 4.0 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (73 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #688,318 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

242 of 256 people found the following review helpful

5.0 out of 5 stars One of my FAVORITE books! May 14, 2004

By Katy Lake TOP 1000 REVIEWERVINE™ VOICE

Format:Hardcover

I got this book over 10 years ago, at the Sturbridge Village gift shop, and I swear, I've read it so much that I probably have whole sections memorized! It is, without doubt, THE best book of its kind.

The American Frugal Housewife is fascinating on a variety of levels, not the least in that Child wrote the book with the emphasis on "AMERICAN." Other such books existed at the time, but they were written in England and for English women. Child was one of the Transcendentalists who were huge advocates of personal self-discipline and restraint, but believed to their core the importance of fighting for what they knew to be right. It wasn't just a religious fervor -although Child's Christianity, like that of Catherine and Harriet Beecher Stowe, was extremely important - but a belief that the still relatively new United States had a unique destiny that set it apart from the rest of the world, specifically the old, decrepit world that was Europe.

Child was no blindfolded nationalist, however. She saw the flaws and contradictions that bound the new Republic. Child, like many other Transcendentalists, was a fervent abolitionist and a proponent of women's equality, and worked all her life toward achieving those ends. Even with its problems, Child was an ardent American. She saw Americans as a unique race of people with a unique and powerful destiny. Americans, she believed, were new and unique, and that the American destiny was far different from the degenerate, rotting hulk of Old World Europe.

So what does all this have to do with the American Frugal Housewife? Well, Child wrote the book specifically to address AMERICAN houswives and what she knew to be their unique problems and issues. It's much more than just a recipe book; it embodies Child's philosophy that the only way toward virtue was self-restraint and sobriety, and that the way to tutor the new nation in these values was by teaching the nation's housewives - the hand that rocks the cradle, Child believed, did indeed rule the world.

The new nation was becoming prosperous, and Child saw that then, like now, people had a difficult time learning how to restrain themselves financially. One part in particular has to do with how mothers should raise their daughters. Child believed they should teach their offspring the virtues of frugality, that it was better to put savings "out at interest" and earn wealth from it, then to indulge in the latest fad - one in this case being something called a Brussels carpet. As new brides went out to set up their household, Child lectures at how they drive their husbands to bankruptcy by embracing fads and trying to keep up with the Joneses.

Other, cheaper types of carpet "will answer just as well," Child wrote. She also recommends using cheap illustrations, nicely framed, as wall art, rather than going overboard to buy the latest European style.

Some of the best sections are on frugality. Child was the "Hints from Heloise" queen of her day, and she's got a solution for everything that could possibly beset the early 19th century housewife. The interesting thing, as others have noted, is how so many of her tips still work so well.

I don't know that I'm ever going to need her instructions on how to brew my own soap in a backyard kettle or how to keep my homemade pickles in a barrel from turning soft, but I did get a burn mark out of an antique chest by using rottenstone and oil, just as she prescribed.

What's rottenstone, you ask? Well, you can buy it at a hardware store, but if you want the recipe, buy the book! It's a fantastic window on early American life, but the sound advice inside, about not getting into debt and how to "do up" your brass so it doesn't tarnish, is still amazingly useful.

I guarantee you'll become a Child fan, just like me! :)

83 of 86 people found the following review helpful

5.0 out of 5 stars A Classic, and things are still applicable. June 10, 2003

By A. Hobbit

Format:Hardcover

I bought this book at a Revolutionar War event this past weekend and I've read it 3 times already (Purchased Sunday, and it's now Tuesday morning). My husband can't believe that I can't put this down. But I find it fascinating reading. Many of the little tips in here are still on many websites today for frugal living (olive oil and a little white vinegar for a wood furniture polish, for example).

Easy and fascinating reading for anyone interested in history, frugal living, and occassionaly a good laugh.

61 of 62 people found the following review helpful

5.0 out of 5 stars Delightful November 17, 2006

By Dwight

Format:Paperback|Amazon Verified Purchase

I think it's very funny that she doesn't waste paper by diving right in with tips and doesn't bother to space out paragraphs. I actually like this more than Tightwad Gazette which tries not to be too preachy. Not Mrs. Childs, she's my kind of charismatic and she's preaching to the choir! I wish I lived as frugally as I should but this book is wonderfully bracing. Her analysis of consumerism still applies today.