My favourite *practical* cookbook is the Good Housekeeping cookery book. There are eleventy zillion editions. The best ones are the pre-metric ones.

My favourite cookbook literature is With Gusto and Relish by Lord Westbury and Donald Downes and is written for "the gentleman who, for want of a man servant, is forced to cook for himself". I've cooked a couple of the dishes from it, but it's better treated as just being a damned fine read rather than as something practical to use in the kitchen.