I am slowly building a collection of old home economics and household management guides, and I would love to find a copy of this 1800’s book just added to Project Gutenburg: The American Woman’s Home, or Principles of Domestic Science, by Catharine E. Beecher and Harriet Beecher Stowe. And, yes, it is the same Harriet Beecher Stowe. Take a skim over the topics covered in the introduction, as described in the table of contents:
The chief cause of woman’s disabilities and sufferings, that women are not trained, as men are, for their peculiar duties–Aim of this volume to elevate the honor and remuneration of domestic employment–Woman’s duties, and her utter lack of training for them–Qualifications of the writers of this volume to teach the matters proposed–Experience and study of woman’s work–Conviction of the dignity and importance of it–The great social and moral power in her keeping–The principles and teachings of Jesus Christ the true basis of woman’s rights and duties.
There is a amazing combination of the very theoretical and the very concrete in this book, from philosophies of child rearing and the morality of dancing to the tip that “Half a cocoa-nut shell, suspended, will hold earth or water for plants and make a pretty hanging-garden.”