I read etiquette and homemaking guides from the 1800s mostly because they're a FASCINATING insight into cultural norms that we often don't think about. I honestly really recommend people crack one of these open at least once--it goes way beyond, like, "what to wear to a ball!!!"
The best ones have advice on decor, how to select high-quality furniture, childrearing, fashion, etc--from a contemporary perspective, and the things the authors feel the need to clarify vs the wild shit that will just casually mention like it's something everyone knows and agrees on is REALLY revealing of the culture and how it's shifted.
And while a lot of the advice is WILDLY bigoted or just outright funny, you'd be surprised how much of it is...just genuinely timeless, and shockingly compassionate.
They ALSO, as a writer, have INVALUABLE resources--because, again, they're talking about things that are so MUNDANE that a lot of the time nobody really sat down to formally document what normal, everyday people thought or cared about--because that's boring! But a book written to provide advice and information to, say, a young woman who's never run her own home before? You can fully expect an entire chapter dedicated to The Types Of Oven, and which features are useful and worth spending money on, and which features are a huge hassle to clean and a waste of space, and what to spend that money on instead.
And like. As a writer who frequently works in the 1800s? Fuck inflation calculators, this is the kind of thing I need. This is absolutely priceless.
Now that being said.
My current favorite 'etiquette guide' in the world is actually like....70% purely practical advice, written by a gentleman the groupchat has affectionately dubbed History's Most Autistic Man In The World, and thank god they didn't have Aderall back then
Because the AuDHD is strong in this one and as a result, in addition to the deeply practical and useful everyday reference points, we also have:
(rapeseed is now called canola and it is indeed very oily!)
I do love referencing conduct books and they are such good sources of information! It is good to keep in mind that they present an ideal, not everyone acted like this, most people probably didn't, or else you wouldn't need a book to get them in line...
old etiquette and housekeeping books are so interesting and so full of amazing advice (also Henry Stephen's "Book Of the Farm" is amazing and gives a month-by-month breakdown of what will be going on on your small farm, as well as all the usual advice, recipes, and instructions) And I really love that a lot of old books on housekeeping don't remotely play into "well, you're only a woman" or treat running a house like easy compared to the lot of men who have to go out and work. Being a housewife is HARD WORK (especially back then). Mrs Beeton puts it best: “As with the commander of an army, or the leader of any enterprise, so it is with the mistress of a house. ... Of all those acquirements, which more particularly belong to the feminine character, there are none which take a higher rank, in our estimation, than such as enter into a knowledge of household duties; for on these are perpetually dependent the happiness, comfort, and well-being of a family."
