Mrs Delany's Menus, Medicines and Manners

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Habitual letter writer, amateur physician, spirited conversationalist, epicurean foodie, skilled handicrafter, social observer and etiquette stickler: Mrs Mary Delany, though born over 300 years ago, was the original lifestyle guru. Here, the very best of Mrs Delany’s recipes, cures and advice come available once again, imparted across the centuries from the thousands of letters she left in her wake.

Born in England in 1700, Mary Delany came from a well-to-do family. She married into money and though the death of her first husband did not leave her rich, it did leave her comfortable. She was in no rush to subject herself again to 'a sick husband, a cross mother-in-law, and a thousand unavoidable impertinences'. Instead, she revelled in her new independence, absorbed in the reveries of early 18th century London, a seductive world of fashion, scandals and suitors.

But finding herself aged 30, and a recent loser in love to a rival she likened to 'a frightened owl', Mary Delany set her sights on Dublin. And Dublin embraced her: soon Jonathan Swift was introducing her to Patrick Delany, her second husband.

Truly the city’s first celebrity, content in her life of birth and privilege, it was Mrs Delany’s happy marriage in Dublin to the Dean Patrick Delany that laid the foundations for a life of abundant correspondence.

In Mrs Delany’s Menus, Medicines and Manners author Katherine Cahill has harvested the letters of a lifetime, focusing on the dramas of family life, the domestic flurries, the personal and the intimate. Here, we go indoors to explore the food and drink, the medicines, servants, décor, wardrobe, decorum and comical characters of our excellent heroine. Packed with advice on home cures, interior design, social etiquette and food, this magical book promises advice as useful today as it was in the days it was first given. What did the Georgians ever do for us?  Allow Mrs Delany to explain …