Old Southern Receipts.
New York: Robert M. McBride & Co., 1930.
Octavo (19 x 13 cm.), xii, 228 pages. FIRST EDITION. The author explains, "... more than two hundred of the receipts in this book have been given to me especially for it by people 'who keep good tables' and use only Southern cooking" (the Foreword). Mary Denson Pretlow (1876-1959) was born and raised on Marle Hill Plantation near Courtland in Southampton County, Virginia. She studied to be a librarian at the NYPL Training Class, and worked in libraries in NYC and St. Louis before returning to Virginia. She wrote two cookbooks, The Small Family Cookbook (1915), and the present work, and the present work was revised and reorganized from The Calendar of Old Southern Recipes (undated, but the author's preface indicates the Calendar was issued in December of the previous year). Despite her interest in cookbooks Dodge did not cook. “I don’t cook … I just don’t like to cook. And I don’t sew,” she once told a local Norfolk, Virginia reporter. In publisher's lime green cloth, titled in white on the spine and the front panel. In the scarce dust jacket, unclipped. Some light soiling to the dust jacket, otherwise near fine. Quite scarce in the marketplace, especially in the dust jacket. [Brown 4142; Cagle 616; Bitting, page382].
Price: $350.00