The Lady's Assistant for regulating and supplying the Table; being a Complete System of Cookery containing the most Select Bills of FareLikewise Directions for Brewing, Remarks on Kitchen Poisons. With an Appendix on Poultry, Dairy and Fruit Garden. The Ninth Edition. MASON IN SIGNED BIRDSALL BINDING

8vo., Tenth Edition [styled 'Ninth Edition' on title], on laid paper, free endpapers mildly browned, title very lightly dust-soiled, some mild and inoffensive age-staining (principally at fore-margins and edges); nineteenth century cloth boards, tan calf back with flat gilt bands, second compartment with red leather label ruled and lettered in gilt (worn but wholly legible) BY BIRDSALL OF NORTHAMPTON, uncut, sometime neatly recased with new endpapers to style, a remarkably bright, crisp copy. The bnding is signed on front paste-down. Charlotte Mason's important collection was first published in 1773. Maclean records a further seven eighteenth-century editions; Bitting adds a Dublin imprint of 1778 as a result of which subsequent copies are one edition later than that stated, hence that with 'eighth edition' on title in actually the ninth (Cagle 864) and the present issue (styled 'ninth edition') is actually the tenth (see Cagle pp. 621-3). The present edition retains the introduction to the first edition, the advertisement to the sixth edition, and the appendix on poultry, the dairy, the kitchen and fruit gardens. VERY SCARCE IN ANY EARLY EDITION.…