Beryl Irving · first published 1941 · this edition 2026 · for the home
The Family Week-End Book
Written and illustrated by Beryl Irving. Hardback, forthcoming.
The Family Week-End Book is Beryl Irving's large, good-humoured compendium of life at home: economical cooking, children's games, gardens, parties, pets, household hints, etiquette, old herb recipes and the small practical rituals of a mid-century British household. She wrote it and drew it, and Seeley Service published it in London in 1941, in wartime; the 1949 printing carries over a hundred of her drawings. It has been hard to find for many years. This edition sets the text afresh from the 1949 printing and keeps every drawing where she placed it, in a cased hardback on cream paper. For the household: a book to browse at the kitchen table, to give, and to argue with.
- Hardback376 pages, cased, over a hundred drawings, 152 × 229 mm£39.00Tell me when it is ready
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The drawings
A hundred and two drawings by the author run through the book, placed where they fall in the 1949 printing. Twenty-four of them, with their page in this edition. Tap any one to see it large.
The children
The house and the kitchen
Games, the garden and the rest
Look inside
From the current proof of this edition, shown at the proportions the pages print. The book is in preparation and the pages may still move. Tap or click a spread to see it large.
What is inside
- Economical recipes, old-fashioned cookery, tea-party ideas and family meals
- Gardening, pets, housework, bedrooms, dressmaking and knitting
- Children's games, family recreations, party games and amateur theatricals
- Fortune-telling, etiquette, guests, domestic law and household hints
- Old herb recipes, and an anthology of verse and prose about family life
Some of its advice belongs to its time and is printed as history, not instruction.
A note on the book
The Family Week-End Book was published in London by Seeley Service in 1941, in the second year of the war, when paper was rationed and a household book had to earn its shelf space. It did: a second printing followed in 1949, with her drawings throughout, and that is the printing this edition is set from.
It is the third of her books on this list and the only one not for children, though children are on nearly every page: in the games, the parties, the theatricals and the drawings. It has been hard to find for many years. The text is set afresh; spelling, prices and advice are as published, and printer's errors have been silently corrected.
Its chapter of books for children lists The Dawnchild among the books for girls: Beryl Irving recommending her own book.
D. B.
The edition
| First edition | Seeley Service, London, 1941 |
|---|---|
| Set from | The 1949 printing |
| Extent | 376 pages |
| Illustrations | Over a hundred line drawings by the author |
| Trim | 152 × 229 mm, cased hardback |
| ISBN | Assigned on publication |
| Publisher | Dawnchild Books |
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Next from Dawnchild
The Family Week-End Book, Beryl Irving, 1941. Hardback, forthcoming. After it, Elfin Song, Florence Harrison, 1912.