Click the images for enlargements.

Some of the science is now of questionable authority (and may have been even at the time of this publication), as in the answer to “What is supposed to be the proximate cause of sleep?” — “An impeded motion of the nervous fluid to the brain, produced by a mechanical compression or collapse of the nerves” (p. 176).

Provenance: Front and back pastedowns rubber-stamped by the Railroad Mens' Reading Room of Sayre, Pennsylvania (“Contributed by Henry C. Davis”); bookseller's label of a firm in Glasgow. Faint oval rubber-stamp on fly-leaf of Richard Hutchinson(?), New Brunswick (probably in England), with pencilled date, 1858.

•  NSTC 2P15178.   Publisher's green moiré cloth, front cover with gilt-stamped candle vignette surrounded by blind-stamped title and arabesques, spine with gilt-stamped title and back cover blind-stamped; binding lightly rubbed, with spine somewhat sunned and covers with streaks of discoloration. Front hinge (inside) tender; paper across back hinge cracked. Pastedowns and fly-leaf markings as above and two text pages rubber-stamped by the Railroad Men; two leaves of publisher's advertising affixed at front.  (23715)

•  In a Mylar folder. Pages darkened, with small discolorations and edges somewhat tattered. A pleasing gift for anyone exploring women’s or culinary history.

Click the interior image for an enlargement.

The culinary doctrines of Dr. William Kitchiner, author of The Cook's Oracle, inspired The Complete Cook according to the latter work's preface, while the “Preface to the American Edition” of the Complete Confectioner notes that America's reputation for unhealthy desserts was one of the motivations for that work's publication, but that much of the actual information present came from Read's (English) Confectioner. In each case, the American editor put his or her own stamp on the original British cookbooks.

Each work is illustrated with a few in-text woodcuts: game trussing in the first case, and modelling tools in the second. The woodcut frontispiece at the front of the volume prominently features a Kohlers Air Tight patent stove.

•  Bitting 355; Cagle 685 (later printing of the first ed.); Lowenstein 504. Not in Brown, Culinary Americana.   Period-style quarter tan cloth and light blue paper–covered boards, spine with printed paper label. Paper of text foxed and spotted, but neither tattered nor brittle.  (24497)

•  Publisher's red cloth in color-printed dust wrapper; minor shelfwear to corners and spine extremities, otherwise clean and fresh.  (23194)

This recipe collection was perhaps originally part of a longer manuscript, and was very probably too useful for its own good to someone who kept it handy—at one point it was set alight, but made it through relatively unscathed.

•  Disbound, now in a Mylar folder; sewing of upper portion holding. Lower inner margin burned, touching first and last words of many lines. Spots of foxing and of discoloration; occasional pencil marks. Very readable despite damage, and not unattractive.

•  Disbound with sewing almost entirely gone, now in Mylar folder. Several small tears covered with cellophane tape; tape repairs to spine. Upper margin waterstained.

•  Publisher's red cloth, spine with title stamped in black, in dust wrapper; binding slightly cocked and dust jacket sunned at fore- and top-edges, with nick to front outer edge. Pages clean. Very good condition.  (22496)

•  Publisher's light blue cloth, front cover and spine stamped in black; spine sunned.  (24484)

•  Stapled in original printed paper wrappers; wrappers lightly stained, and chipped over edges and spine. Pages age-toned but generally clean, a few with short edge tears. (13751)

Cagle and Stafford note that the work was previously published in 1835 in the author's weekly magazine, The Original, and then appeared in book form in 1837; the present volume, the second edition, is reproduced in part by photolithography from the earlier printing. None of the early editions are common.

•  Bitting, 519; Brown 2378; Cagle & Stafford 788. Publisher's green cloth, covers and spine black-stamped in decorative designs, front cover and spine gilt-stamped with title. Binding with light signs of wear: corners bumped, spine head and foot pulled, spine faintly faded. Top edge gilt. Hinges slightly tender. Half-title verso with inked ownership inscription. A nice, clean copy.

Valentina Wasson’s upbringing in mushroom-loving Russia inspired this work, although directly Russian-related material is scant compared to the masses of international lore compiled here. Befitting a labor of love, the volume was handsomely printed by the prestigious Stamperia Valdonega (following Hans Mardersteig’s design) on heavy paper with deckle edges. Its pochoir plates reproduce beautiful life-sized watercolor paintings of mushrooms done by naturalist Jean-Henri Fabre, and other numerous plates depict other works of interest such as Gainsborough’s “Mushroom Girl.”

Provenance: From the library of chef and culinary collector Louis I. Szathmary, with the laid in, retained carbon of a letter from him to Ralph Geoffrey Newman (the late, noted, Chicago bookseller); this thanks Newman for “the interesting information on the Mushroom book.” A duplicate copy of Newman’s purchase invoice, with Szathmary’s cheque photocopied onto it, is also present.

This is copy number 412 of a limited edition of 512.

•  Green publisher’s cloth, spines with gilt-stamped labels, housed in the original neat buckram-covered slipcase. Corners and spine extremities show slight traces of wear with bindings otherwise crisp and clean; slipcase likewise shows only the faintest of wear. (In our rather bad photograph, the slipcase looks a tad bowed; in real life, it is NOT.) Glassine wrappers present (somewhat yellowed, a bit short as issued, and one with a bit missing at top of that spine). Top edges gilt. Pages and plates clean. A lovely association copy of this significant and uncommon mycological text.

  A PRB&M “FEATURED BOOK”  —
for others,  click here.