S[mith] (E[liza]) The Compleat Housewife: or, Accomplished Gentlewoman’s companion: being a Collection of upwards of Five Hundred of the most approved Receipts in Cookery, Pastry, Confectionary, Preserving, Pickles, Cakes, Creams, Jellies, Made Wines, Cordials..., second edition, 6 folding engraved bills of fare, advertisement f. at end, woodcut head- and tail-pieces and decorative initials, contemporary ink manuscript medical recipes to endpapers and a8v, index misbound after sig. A (before start of main text), title with neat narrow repair verso to outer margin, T1&2 small hole at start of final line of text, with loss of a few letters, but no loss of sense, occasional marginal worming, some spotting or light staining, lightly browned, new endpapers, contemporary panelled calf, sympathetically rebacked, spine in compartments and with burgundy leather label, corners repaired, [Bitting, p.438 (note); Maclean pp.133-135; Oxford p.60 (note); cf. Simon BG 1392 & 1393; Cagle 996 & 997; & Vicaire 794], 8vo, Printed for J. Pemberton, at the Golden Buck, over-against St. Dunstan’s Church in Fleet-Street, 1728. *** Scarce edition at auction. Despite her popularity little is known of the author, apart from her prefatory statement that she had been employed for upwards of thirty years in fashionable and noble families. The 1742 Virginia edition was the first cookery book published in America.Provenance: ‘Phebe Haton, her Book, July ye 2nd. Anno Domini 1730’ (ink signatures to title and A2r).