How to be a Good Husband

Don't think that your wife has placed waste-paper baskets in the rooms as ornaments. Don't forget that very true remark that while face powder may catch a man, baking powder is the stuff to hold him. Marriage can be a series of humorous miscommunications, a power struggle, or a diplomatic nightmare. Men and women have long struggled to figure each other out — and the misunderstandings can continue well after they've been joined in matrimony. But long before Men Are From Mars, Women Are From Venus, couples turned to self-help booklets such as How to Be a Good Husband and How to Be a Good Wife, two historic advice books that are now delightfully reproduced by the Bodleian Library. The books, originally published in the 1930s for middle-class British couples, are filled with witty and charming aphorisms on how wives and husbands should treat each other. Some advice is unquestionably outdated — "It is a wife's duty to look her best. If you don't tidy yourself up, don't...