Scarce with the C. Walter Hodges wrapper

Lutes, Della & Hodges, C. Walter [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 wrapper (6s. net) featuring a design by C. Walter Hodges who also provides the title page, one other decoration and the printed label designs ; overlaid reprice sticker priced ‘2’6’ to the spine with replacement paper spine label tipped-in to the rear; The BOOK with endpapers mildly offset; light pencil markings now erased from front free endpaper, leaving some light indentations; spine tips and edges very slightly worn and faded, but a near-Fine copy. The Very Good++ charming WRAPPER which is lightly and evenly toned, some light creasing and darkening to the 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 ++