Are you ready for this? Pinny on, sleeves rolled up? Right, here is your programme of work for the week:

Monday Morning. Extra cleaning after Sunday. Bed-linen to change. Drawing-room or dining-room to turn out.
Tuesday Morning. Washing day; where it can be afforded the washing may be sent out, or a woman hired to assist. But even this is not necessary when SUNLIGHT SOAP is used.
Wednesday Morning. Clean Bedrooms. Put away washing and ironing before night.
Thursday Morning. Clean Landing, Stairs, Bathroom, Silver, Dish-covers, etc.
Friday Morning. Clean Kitchen, Hall, Scullery, Pantry, Yard, and conveniences.
Saturday Morning. Extra cooking for week-end.
The afternoons may be devoted to sundry little odds and ends of housework, such as mending and sewing. Also for receiving friends and paying visits.

The above is taken from Woman’s World, published by Lever Brothers Ltd in about 1900, mainly as an advertising vehicle for their Sunlight soap. While I do not think we should believe that all housewives everywhere – with or without staff – would have totally adhered to this regime, it does reflect the kinds of tasks being carried out in many homes, week in, week out, a little over a century ago. I feel worn out just reading it.

The first housekeeping book I bought was House into Home by Vogue journalist Elizabeth Kendall, with illustrations by David Gentleman. Published in 1962, rather than an instruction manual it is more a series of essays on how to make a house attractive and inviting. Indeed, some of Ms Kendall’s ideas were ahead of their time, such as the three-piece sofa and two matching chairs being nonsensical as men and women usually like completely different types of chairs. While Lever Brothers’ Woman’s World focuses on cleaning there is very little scrubbing in Ms Kendall’s book. Instead, she encourages us to make our homes welcoming both within – suggesting that a wall of books is about the most decorative feature you can have – and without, by planting window boxes with scarlet and pink geraniums. One metaphorically beats us with the sharp stick of housework; the other tempts us with the juicy carrot of home-making. Housekeeping books originated around 1800 to provide advice on all aspects of housewifery and were a continuation of an earlier genre, the schoolroom book, written for girls of most classes, providing them with a basic education in what they would require in adulthood, whether as a wife and mother or as a servant. Seldom were they illustrated (the exception being working diagrams and line drawings and, from the 20th century, some carried black and white photographs) nor were they set in fine bindings, although those intended for the mistress of the house were sometimes leather-bound. They were working manuals.

Before 1800, the typical domestic economy manual was little more than a collection of recipes, says Dena Attar in her Bibliography of Household Books Published in Britain 1800-1914 (Prospect Books, 1987.) An early example is The Housekeeping Book of Susanna Whatman, written in 1776 during her marriage to James Whatman, a papermaker. As Mistress of Turkey Court in Kent she wrote detailed instructions for her servants, providing us with an insight into Georgian domestic arrangements: The first thing a housekeeper should teach a new servant is to carry her candle upright. We might smile at first, but it doesn’t take long to appreciate the importance of this instruction.

As well as the minutiae of life’s practicalities, from these books we can also learn some of the social mores of the day. Some advice still holds true. In The Practical Housekeeper (Keeler & Kirkpatrick, Philadelphia, 1898) Mrs Florence Stanton advises, It is well not to rush into matrimony without due attention to such sublunary matters as dollars and cents; for the notion that once a couple is married, all will go right, is a foolish one. Chapters follow on furnishing a house, cleaning and disinfecting, and the intricacies of napkin folding, something which doesn’t exercise us greatly today.

From the 1890s many books developed an advertising bias – just as in the aforementioned Woman’s World. This tells us about popular products and the new technologies of the day. By the time Cassell published the 1912 edition of its Household Guide (in six volumes), housewifery had been promoted to a ‘science’. In her introduction, The Countess of Aberdeen says, May this volume quicken the desire for adequate training in Household Science among many girls of all classes, and at the same time prove a great comfort and help to many housewives. But as well as advice on the care and education of children, household law, and ‘sick nursing’ – illness was taken very seriously and not without reason in the days before penicillin – much of middle-class women’s time was spent merely filling in time and so they are also encouraged to read, to rest and to embroider. This was certainly a guide for the middle-classes and included are the rules of etiquette and visiting. ‘Dainty’ was used profusely to describe everything from embroidered tray cloths to china tea services.

Through housekeeping books we may also witness social change, for example the disappearance of domestic servants after World War One, plus with the arrival of early electrical appliances. When Helen Simpson’s The Happy Housewife (Hodder & Stoughton, 1934) was published, modernity was the clean-sweeping new broom: The old spring-cleaning, about which newspapers and comedians still make jokes – the upheaval that happened yearly, when a man could not find his pipe, and the parrot turned up under the meat cover – this is gone, with our grandmothers’ heavy velvet curtains, bobbles, and unnecessary ornaments. A house should be clean, not once a year as a treat, but all the year round as a matter of course. She proceeds to tell us how this can be achieved. Similarly, in Keeping House with Elizabeth Craig (Collins, 1936), Ms Craig says, I have no use for elaborately decorated or furnished homes or elaborate meals. The simpler the home, the simpler the housekeeping. Not that dissimilar from Shirley Conran’s approach in her iconic book, Superwoman (Sidgwick & Jackson, 1977.) Conran’s phrase Life is too short to stuff a mushroom soon came to represent any task too petty on which to waste valuable time.

In the days of austerity immediately following World War Two, housekeeping books returned to life’s practicalities. In 101 Things for the Housewife to do (1949), the young housewife is shown how to fit a tap washer, to mend pots and pans, and to unstop a blocked sink. But by the mid-1950s, heralded by some as the new Elizabethan age, again emphasis changes: Home Making by Julia Cairns includes a chapter entitled ‘A Room for Him’, with suggestions of wood panelling and Adam-style fireplaces, in order that ‘he’ might feel ‘king of the castle’.

Everything connected with the home is currently fashionable – newsstands are overflowing with craft and stitchery magazines and television programmes such as The Great British Bake Off and The Great British Sewing Bee command huge audiences. Although it all seems remarkably quaint and old-fashioned, far from being consigned to history, housekeeping books are still being published. Home Comforts – The Art & Science of Keeping House by Cheryl Mandelson (Cassell & Co, 2001) is claimed to be the first publication of this kind since Mrs Beeton’s Household Management, having a sole author writing a comprehensive book about housekeeping. There are many other recent titles in the genre. Eventually, such books will demonstrate our approach to housekeeping in the early part of the 21st century.