The Virginia Housewife Author:Mrs. Mary Randolph This book is the work of one author, Mary Randolph, and she puts her mark on every page. — In 1824, when the first edition of the book was published, she was 62. She had been the lady of the manor on a Virginia tobacco plantation and in a Richmond town house, and the proprietor of a Richmond boardinghouse besides. — She had been deeply involved, w... more »ith her husband, in two political scandals that reached into the White House and beyond the Mississippi.
If Mrs. Randolph had wanted to write a family saga, she would have had more than enough material. But cookery had been her lifelong passion, even at one point her profession, and she chose a cookbook rather than a novel to embody her experience -- inside kitchens and out of them.« less