The Collection Part I
Searchlight Homemaking Guide
sold out
Searchlight Homemaking Guide
$30.00
by Ida Migliario, et al
Though our copy is the 1949 edition, in which the title had changed slightly, Jean Zimmerman wrote about the Searchlight Homemaking Guide in her own book, Made from Scratch: Reclaiming the Pleasures of the American Hearth in 2003, and it serves as as good a description as any we can come up with: “The late 1930s…saw the publication of a domestic advice manual called The Household Searchlight Homemaking Guide, the product of The Household Magazine, in Topeka, Kansas. Perhaps its lasting popularity—it was reprinted for over a dozen years—came as a result of the sheer breadth of its contents. In his foreword, the magazine’s editor-in-chief promised that the book would deal ‘in an intelligible and usable way with a wide range of homemaking problems, including etiquette, weddings, menus, quantity cookery, health, beauty, home furnishings and equipment, dyeing, stain removal, insect extermination, the care of the lawn, entertainment, club activities, and the mental health of children.’….Like Lydia Maria Child’s American Frugal Housewife, the Searchlight Guide offers dictums concerning monogramed table linens (dimensions of folding, size of the monograms to the quarter inch) abutting advice on how to shift a bedridden patient, scrape glue from wood furniture, and care for a newborn. Dated though it is, (it offers alternative recipes for homemade starch at a time when starch was widely commercially available), it still encompasses an amazing trove of useful information.” The second edition was covered in an interesting blue, white and black plaid cloth, and instead of a standard table of contents, has a tabs for each section heading. There is a detailed index at the end.
Published in 1949 by Household, Topeka, Kansas
Edition: Second Edition
Binding: Hardcover
Condition: Fine
Comments: Our copy is in excellent condition, with no tears or marks on any of the pages. The index tabs are all intact. There is some bumping on the bottom right corner.
WorldCat description: 320 pages : illustrations ; 26 cm
Seller Inventory #: 0000220
Though our copy is the 1949 edition, in which the title had changed slightly, Jean Zimmerman wrote about the Searchlight Homemaking Guide in her own book, Made from Scratch: Reclaiming the Pleasures of the American Hearth in 2003, and it serves as as good a description as any we can come up with: “The late 1930s…saw the publication of a domestic advice manual called The Household Searchlight Homemaking Guide, the product of The Household Magazine, in Topeka, Kansas. Perhaps its lasting popularity—it was reprinted for over a dozen years—came as a result of the sheer breadth of its contents. In his foreword, the magazine’s editor-in-chief promised that the book would deal ‘in an intelligible and usable way with a wide range of homemaking problems, including etiquette, weddings, menus, quantity cookery, health, beauty, home furnishings and equipment, dyeing, stain removal, insect extermination, the care of the lawn, entertainment, club activities, and the mental health of children.’….Like Lydia Maria Child’s American Frugal Housewife, the Searchlight Guide offers dictums concerning monogramed table linens (dimensions of folding, size of the monograms to the quarter inch) abutting advice on how to shift a bedridden patient, scrape glue from wood furniture, and care for a newborn. Dated though it is, (it offers alternative recipes for homemade starch at a time when starch was widely commercially available), it still encompasses an amazing trove of useful information.” The second edition was covered in an interesting blue, white and black plaid cloth, and instead of a standard table of contents, has a tabs for each section heading. There is a detailed index at the end.
Published in 1949 by Household, Topeka, Kansas
Edition: Second Edition
Binding: Hardcover
Condition: Fine
Comments: Our copy is in excellent condition, with no tears or marks on any of the pages. The index tabs are all intact. There is some bumping on the bottom right corner.
WorldCat description: 320 pages : illustrations ; 26 cm
Seller Inventory #: 0000220