author

Mildred Maddocks Bentley

A practical early-20th-century home economist and writer, she treated housekeeping and cooking as skills that could be organized, tested, and taught. Her books reflect an era when domestic work was increasingly presented as modern, efficient, and professional.

1 Audiobook

The Consumer Viewpoint

The Consumer Viewpoint

by Mildred Maddocks Bentley

About the author

Mildred Maddocks Bentley was an American home economics writer best known for Good Housekeeping's Book on the Business of Housekeeping (1924). The book identifies her as a "Home Economics: Consultant and Writer" and presents household management as a field that could benefit from planning, budgeting, and labor-saving methods.

Her work was closely tied to the world of magazines, consumer advice, and test-kitchen style instruction. Sources also link her to The Consumer Viewpoint, a study of household devices, and to cookbook projects including the Delineator Cook Book and the pineapple recipe collection Hawaiian Pineapple as One Hundred Good Cooks Serve It.

Taken together, these works suggest a writer interested in making everyday domestic life more systematic and approachable for readers. Even now, her books offer a revealing snapshot of how cooking, shopping, and housework were being reimagined for modern American households in the early 1900s.