author

Maud C. Cooke

Best known for practical late-19th-century books on cooking and etiquette, this American author wrote for readers who wanted clear advice for everyday life at home and in society. Her surviving works still offer a vivid glimpse of domestic habits and social expectations of the Victorian era.

2 Audiobooks

Social Life; or, The Manners and Customs of Polite Society

Social Life; or, The Manners and Customs of Polite Society

by Maud C. Cooke

Twentieth Century Culture and Deportment

Twentieth Century Culture and Deportment

by Maud C. Cooke

About the author

Maud C. Cooke is known today through a group of household and etiquette books that circulated widely in the late 1800s. Library of Congress records list her as the author of Three Meals a Day (1887), a substantial cookbook, and Social Etiquette; or, Manners and Customs of Polite Society (1896), a guide to behavior and social customs.

Other cataloged works connected with her name include Breakfast, Dinner and Supper; or, What to Eat and How to Prepare It and 20th Century Cook Book. Taken together, these books suggest a writer focused on practical domestic instruction, combining recipes, housekeeping advice, entertaining, and table manners for a broad general audience.

Very little biographical information about her personal life was easy to confirm from reliable sources consulted here, so she is best introduced through her books. What stands out is her blend of usefulness and social guidance: she wrote the kind of manuals meant to help readers manage both the kitchen and the rituals of polite society.