What Shall we have for Dinner?

Advisory: there is mild swearing in this episode and brief discussion of sexual matters.Catherine Dickens was married to the novelist, Charles Dickens. We do not, as a rule, remember the woman who wrote What Shall We Have for Dinner? (published in 1851). In this episode we discuss her book. It was not published it under her own name, but under her pseudonym Lady Maria Clutterbuck.It’s a really interesting text. It isn’t just a collection of recipes; it’s organised into monthly menus, illustrating what a well-run Victorian household might serve across the year, balancing cost, season, and variety. In many ways, it reads like a guide to managing life, not just cooking - a clue, perhaps, to the invisible labour she was doing every day as the angel at the hearth. In literary history, Catherine Dickens appears, if she appears at all, as a footnote to her husband (they never actually divorced); wife, mother of ten. He ensured that she was sadly associated with domestic inadequacy, largely because that is how he chose to describe her when he wanted her gone.Her book was published before Mrs Beeton was the first famous domestic goddess and reflects the skills and complexity of running a Victorian household at that level - which was no small feat. It required logistical precision, social awareness, and emotional labour on a scale we tend not to acknowledge. Catherine was not simply cooking; she was orchestrating a complex system that sustained not only a large family but also the social and professional world of one of the most famous men in England. This social and household management went alongside her duties as the wife of an internationally renowned writer and her work on facilitating his literary life. She was a popular and well-respected woman in those circles.Essentially, Dickens dumped her. After 16 years of marriage, he wanted her gone - in this episode we discuss part of her story and how one of the Britain’s most famous novelists used his story-telling to write her out of his. The story we inherit about Catherine Dickens is not neutral but shaped, deliberately, by Charles Dickens himself during the breakdown of their marriage. He publicly distanced himself from her, implying a lack of compatibility, a failure of understanding, even a kind of personal deficiency. In a move that feels startlingly modern in its manipulation of narrative, he controlled the story.We consider Catherine’s story and the value and importance and many achievements of her life. The biography we refer to in our discussion the most is The Other Dickens: A Life of Catherine Hogarth by Lillian Nayder. This is a public episode. If you would like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit shewrotetoo.substack.com