Reading the home: The case of the english housewife

A print manual must be pedagogically complete, or else point readers toward practical – even psychological – ways of compensating for its incompleteness. Sandra Sherman. In 1615 soldier, writer, and horse-breeder Gervase Markham published a comprehensive estate guide that became an enduring bestseller in seventeenth-century England. First appended to a book about men’s rural sports, The English Housewife pointedly took issue with other fashionable cookery books encouraging hospitality, shopping, and leisure activities for women.