The London Art of Cookery and Housekeeper’s Complete Assistant
FARLEY, John
On a New Plan, made plain and easy to the Understanding of every Housekeeper, Cook and Servant in the Kingdom. The Eleventh Edition, with new and elegant Receipts.
BRIGHT, CRISP COPY
Published: Scatcherd & Letterman, 1807
Stock code: 26394
Price: £365.00
8vo., Eleventh Edition, with copper-engraved portrait frontispiece and 12 engraved full-page illustrations in the text, fore-edge very lightly spotted; attractively bound in twentieth century tan calf, back with gilt rules, second compartment with nineteenth-century red leather label lettered and tooled in gilt, boards unevenly sunned else a very good, remarkably bright, crisp copy.
First published in 1783, Farley's work was a popular and continuing success, reaching its twelfth edition in 1811. Principal Cook at the London Tavern, Farley claims that his work 'unlike so many which are without method or order, is marked by perspicuity and regularity'. However Cagle reveals that Fiona Lucraft provides a detailed account of the author's plagiarism from Raffald and Glasse. Farley's name appears below the portrait from the ninth edition (?) onwards. Bitting 152; Cagle, 675; Maclean, pp.50-52; Oxford, p.114; Wheaton & Kelly 2066 (all recording the first edition). SCARCE IN THIS CONDITION.