LUTES, Della & Walter HODGES, [Illus.]~ The Country Kitchen
First UK printing, G. Bell & Sons Ltd., London: 1938
8vo., red publisher’s boards with printed paper labels to upper cover and spine; together in the unclipped pictorial dustwrapper (6s. net) featuring a design by C Walter Hodges; overlaid price sticker priced ‘2’6’ to spine; with additional illustrated title page by Hodges; replacement paper spine label tipped-in to rear; THE BOOK with endpapers mildly offset; pencil markings now erased from front free endpaper, leaving some light indentations; spine tips and edges a little worn and discoloured, but a near-fine copy, still, in the very good plus, charming DUSTWRAPPER which is lightly and evenly toned, some creasing and darkening to folds; with some light nicking to head of spine, but in lovely condition nonetheless. The wrapper is protected in a removable Brodart archival cover. First UK edition, first printing, with an introduction by Florence White. The American writer, editor, and expert on cooking and housekeeping Della Lutes worked, in her early career, as editor of American Motherhood. After the First World War she moved to Today's Housewife, another magazine from the same publisher. She also edited Table Talk - The National Food Magazine. She is best known today for The Country Kitchen, a book which is part-memoir, and part-reicipe book, which replicated her early memories in the kitchen from her Michigan childhood. For it, she won a National Book Award for "Most Original Work". Florence White, herself an established cookery author and founder of the English Folk Cookery Association, writes in her introduction that the book: “is not a mere collection of cookery recipes; it is a fascinating story of life as lived in a South Michigan farmhouse some forty to fifty years ago”. The English artist C. Walter Hodges was a freelance illustrator predominantly for the Radio Times and later children’s books, most famously working with Rosemary Sutcliffe, as well as Elizabeth Goudge for her popular children’s books The Little White Horse (1946), Smokey House (1939) and Sister of the Angels (1939), among many others. He won the annual Greenaway Medal for British children's book illustration in 1964. An insightful work, published the year before WWII would change the face of British Cookery.
BINDING: Hardcover
CONDITION: Near Fine
JACKET: Very Good +
£275