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A very good half leather binding complete with all engravings. 8vo. pp.54/.pp.571. 6.50" x 4.25 x 1.25". Black polished calf over marbled boards (scuffed). Edges lightly rubbed and bumped. Engraved frontis entitiled: "Art Of Cookery". Printed title lightly toned. All ten engravings are present. Clear English text throughout. The engravings are lightly soiled. There are many small blemishes throughout the book (not affecting the text), indicative of a well-used cook book. ** " RUNDELL, MARIA ELIZA (1745 1828), writer on cookery, born in 1745, was only child of Abel Johnstone Ketelby of Ludlow, Shropshire. She married Thomas Rundell, partner of the eminent firm of Rundell & Bridges, silversmiths and jewellers, which was long established on Ludgate Hill, London. While living at Swansea in 1806 Mrs. Rundell collected various recipes for cookery and suggestions for household management for the use of her married daughters. She sent the manuscript to the publisher, John Murray (1778 1843) [q. v.], of whose family she was an old friend. He suggested the title Domestic Cookery, had the work carefully revised by competent editors, among whom was Dr. Charles Taylor, of the Society of Arts, and added engravings. It was published as A New System of Domestic Cookery in 1808, and had an immense success. From five to ten thousand copies were long printed yearly. It became one of Murray s most valuable properties, and in 1812, when he bought the lease of the house in Albemarle Street, part of the surety consisted of the copyright of the Domestic Cookery. As the earliest manual of household management with any pretensions to completeness, it called forth many imitations. In 1808 Murray presented Mrs. Rundell with £150. She replied, I never had the smallest idea of any return for what I considered a free gift to one whom I had long regarded as my friend. In acknowledging a copy of the second edition, Mrs. Rundell begged Murray not to think of remunerating her further, and in the preface to the edition of 1810 she expressly stated that she would receive no emolument. But in 1814 Mrs. Rundell accused Murray of neglecting the book and of hindering its sale. After obtaining an injunction in the vice-chancellor s court to restrain Murray from republishing the book, she in 1821 placed an improved version of it in the hands of Messrs. Longman for publication. Murray retaliated by obtaining an injunction from the Lord Chancellor to prevent Mrs. Rundell from publishing the book with any of his additions and embellishments. On 3 Nov. the Lord Chancellor dissolved the injunction against Murray, but gave right to neither party, declaring that a Court of Law and not a Court of Equity must decide between them (Gent. Mag. 1821, ii. 465). After long delay, Mrs. Rundell accepted Murray s offer of £1,000. in full discharge of all claims, together with a similar sum to defray her costs and expenses (cf. Moore, Memoirs, v. 118, 119). The book was translated into German in 1841; the sixty-fifth English edition appeared in the same year. Mrs. Rundell died, aged 83, at Lausanne on 16 Dec. 1828. Her husband predeceased her. Other books by Mrs. Rundell are: 1. Domestic Happiness, 1806. 2. Letters addressed to Two Absent Daughters, 1814. Now regarded as the first "Domestic Goddess", predating the perennial favorite, Isobella Beeton, by nearly a century, Mrs. Rundell modestly claimed that her book was not only essential to the "modern" middleclass housewife (rather than "professed cooks" note, the difference that a generation makes here between this Hannah Glasse s 1747 work, which was directed at servants: "…few servants there are, that know how to roast and boil to perfection. I do not pretend to teach professed cooks, but my design is to instruct the ignorant and unlearned (which will likewise be of great use in all private families) and in so plain and. full a manner, that the most illiterate and ignorant person, who can but read, will know how to do eve.
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