Illustrated Edition of First Cookbook Written by an American Heads PBA Galleries Sale
American Cookery, or, The Art of Dressing Viands, Fish, Poultry, and Vegetables and the Best Mode of Making Puff Pastes, Pies, Tarts, Puddings, Custards, and Preserves...Together with the rules of Carving at Dinner parties. Exemplified With Cuts by Amelia Simmons (Woodstock, A. Colton, 1831)
The 1796 edition of Amelia Simmons' American Cookery, or, The Art of Dressing Viands, Fish, Poultry, and Vegetables... is regarded as the first cookery book published in the US by an American author, and the illustrated 1831 edition comes to the Rare Books & Manuscripts auction at PBA Galleries on February 26.
Simmons was listed as authoress in the first three printings and as an American Orphan or an Orphan in all subsequent printings. For Simmons, according to the preface of the present volume, being orphaned made it "essentially necessary to have an opinion and determination of her own" and that she "must depend solely upon character." Hence, an ability to "do those things which are really essential to the perfecting them as good wives, and useful members to society."
The 1831 second edition improved is the only one to feature illustrations - eight woodcuts exemplifying 'Rules for Carving at Dinner Parties' - and has an estimate of $4,000-$6,000.
Other highlights from the auction include:
* Automata, Old and New by William Conrad Cooke (London, Chiswick Press, 1893), based on Cooke’s lecture to the exclusive London gentleman’s dining club Ye Sette of Odd Volumes in November 1891 on “self-moving machines as are made either in the forms of men or of animals or by which animal motions and functions are more or less imitated" (estimate: $2,000-$3,000). It is listed in the catalogue of the Library of Congress as the first English-language book on the general subject of 'Robots'.
* a collection of Ansel Adams Yosemite winter sport and recreation photographs for Donald Tresidder including 68 gelatin silver prints plus 25 negatives on 18 strips (estimate: $4,000-$6,000)
* a 1561 edition (Basle, Apud H. Frobenium et N. Episcopium) of Marsilio Ficino's translatin of Plato's Dialogues in striking gilt-tooled prize binding (estimate $10,000-$15,000)
* Album Mexicano. Colección de paisajes, monumentos, costumbres y ciudades principales de La Republica, 28 lithographed plates in colors and tint comprising scarce color views of day-to-day life in Mexico City with plates by Casimiro Castro, A. Gallice, M. Mohar, E. Perez, and J. Alvarez (estimate: $4,000-$6,000)
* The First Six Books of the Elements of Euclid in which coloured diagrams and symbols are used instead of letters for the greater ease of learners (London, William Pickering, 1847) Oliver Byrne's edition which employed four-color printing as a teaching aid (estimate: $10,000-$15,000)
