Abstract

Samuel and Isabella Beeton’s Englishwoman’s Domestic Magazine (1852–79), a key periodical for middle-class women in Victorian England, is best remembered for features like culinary recipes, fashion plates and embroidery patterns. However, it also contained regular columns about the treatment of illnesses and the promotion of health and wellbeing. This contribution considers a corpus of 140 articles taken from the column “The sick room and nursery” and from classified ads published regularly in the magazine between 1852 and 1860 in order to focus on the topic of health and nourishment. Specific corpus queries demonstrate the pervasiveness of discourses related to food, diet, and nutrition both as promoters of health and as key factors in recovering from diseases. Moreover, the attention on previously generally neglected sections of the magazine aims to shed more light on the importance of food discourses that went beyond the simple recipes, while at the same time contributing to the dissemination of medical knowledge to lay readers (mainly, but not exclusively, middle-class women in this case). By tracing these discourses, the article reveals how the periodical functioned not only as a guide for domestic management, but also as a tool for socialising women into specific health practices.

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