Good Things in England. A Practical Cookery book for Everyday Use. Containing Traditional and Regional Recipes suited to Modern Tastes contributed by English Men and Women between 1399 and 1932.
London, Toronto, New York: Jonathan Cape, 1932.
Octavo (20.5 x 14.5 cm.), 392 pages. Photographically illustrated frontispiece and three additional plates. FIRST EDITION. The classic cookbook by Florence White (1863-1940), founder of the English Folk Cookery Association. The book contains regional specialities as well as numerous traditional favorites, encompassing recipes from the England of Chaucer's time right up to the early twentieth century. White was first exposed to English country cooking as a young girl, when she was sent to Fareham "to nurse her father's two elderly sisters, formerly proprietors of the Lion Hotel and Assembly Rooms. From them, as she later described in her autobiography, she learned that 'good epicurean country-house cookery which had been handed down the family from mother to daughter since the days of Queen Elizabeth'" (ODNB; White, A Fire in the Kitchen). She didn't turned her serious efforts to traditional food until in her sixties, founding the English Folk Cookery Association in 1928 and in 1932 published this book, considered her manifesto and edited the first of the association's Good Food Registers. The Registers contained information about where one might find good English cooking or foodstuffs in towns, villages, hotels, restaurants, and guest houses. Clean and sound, with no annotation or marks of any sort. In publisher's tan cloth, titled at the spine with a bit of rubbing to the titling, otherwise fine. Very scarce in the first edition. Lacking the rare dust jacket. [Bitting, page 493; not in Cagle].
Price: $900.00