[Platt, Sir Hugh; Hugh Plat]

Delights for Ladies to adorne their Persons, Tables, Closets, and Distillatories; with Beauties, Banquets, Perfumes, and Waters … [with:] Closet for ladies & gentlewomen, or, the art of preserving...,

London: Printed by R. Y. [R. Young] and to bee sold by James Boler; Printed for Arthur Johnson, dwelling near the great North dore of Paules, 1635; 1618.

Two works bound as one. Delights: duodecimo (12.5 x 7 cm.), [190] unpaginated; A-H12; complete, with the final bordered blank at H-12. Text in ornamental woodcut borders throughout. Index. Author from printed signature at end of preliminary epistle in verse. [With:] Closet: 16mo. (12.5.7 cm.), 1-190 pages; A-M8. Also with woodcut borders (though a slightly different design) throughout, but pages numbered. The printing has been attributed to Thomas Purfoot (cf. STC) ~ Using Notaker as a guide, this would be the fourteenth of all printings of Platt's Delights, and the second with R. Young as the printer (H. Lownes and R. Young issued two printings together (1628 and 1630). A Closet for Ladies and Gentlewomen, originally printed by Arthur Johnson in 1608, is often bound together with Delights, but attribution to Hugh Platt as author or compiler remains not definitive. It is worth noting that when H. Lowens took up printing A Closet in 1624, they already had issuing Delights for nineteen years. Oxford, English Cookery Books, notes the attribution appears "in the Douce catalogue, but it looks more like a rival work." (cf. Catalogue of the printed books and manuscripts bequeathed by Francis Douce, Esq., to the Bodleian Library. Oxford, 1840). ~ ‘The well-educated Londoner Sir Hugh Platt wrote widely on food technology and supply, on famine, and on new modes of food technology. He calls his receipts ‘inventions’ and ‘experiments’ rather than ‘secrets’ in The Jewel House of Art and Nature (1594) … His Delightes for Ladies (1602) gave receipts for cookery, cosmetics, distillation, housewifery and preservation’ (The Oxford Companion to Food, page 276). ‘The reader is left in no sort of doubt about what went on in the Elizabethan kitchen, and few could put the book down without some regret for the passing of those most leisurely days. The book was immensely popular and passed through at least twenty-five editions during the next half-century. It is not surprising that some of these have survived in single copies only, and some have probably disappeared altogether … Most of the surviving copies are pretty grubby and often incomplete’ (Bent Juel-Jensen, ‘Some Uncollected Authors XIX’, in The Book Collector, 1959). Some light edgewear and age-toning throughout. Healthy margins throughout, with none of the loss due to over-trimming usually seen with these small works. In early full calf, filleted front and back; filleted bands on spine, with gilt-titled, red morocco spine label. Owner's signature to final rear blank, "Mary Hawkins, her book". With few copies of each in institutions and fewer appearances on the market, both printings are rare. [Delights: OCLC records three copies of this printing, just two in the U.S. (Huntington, Yale); STC (2nd ed.) 19986; ESTC S174742; Oxford, page 13 ff. (noting many printings, but not this); Notaker 516; Vicaire 183-4 (1609 edition)]. [Closet: OCLC records three copies (BL, NLM – both imperfect copies – and Yale); Cagle; Hazlitt, STC 19983. Oxford, pages 14-15; Vicaire 183-4].

Price: $9,000.00