For 19th-century wives who did not have servants, advertisers published a wide variety of help books. Princeton University Library has a large and varied collection of household helpers, guides to home-making, manuals for entertaining, and other ephemeral publications. These few just passed by on the way to cataloguing with interesting remedies, receipts, shopping tips, advise on raising children, sewing diagrams, and many other articles along with advertisements. The Smithsonian did a nice online exhibition: http://www.sil.si.edu/ondisplay/making-homemaker/index.htm.