Rare books, manuscripts and ephemera from five centuries

COUNTRY LIVING AND COUNTRY COOKING
ADANSON, AGLAÉ. LA MAISON DE CAMPAGNE. Tome premier [-troisième]. Paris: Audot, Libraire-Éditeur, 1822. £685 

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FIRST EDITION. Three volumes, 12mo, pp. [iv], 324, [1] contents, [1] blank, with one engraved plate and two folding tables; [ii], 359, [1] blank, [1] contents, [1] blank, with three engraved plates; [iv], 362, [1] errata, [1] blank; foxing and spotting throughout, and the odd marginal tear; a few nineteenth-century handwritten recipe sheets stapled to rear free endpaper of volume two; in contemporary calf; flat spines tooled in gilt with black morocco lettering-pieces; bindings worn but sound. 

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Rare first edition of what was to become one of the most popular guides to domestic economy, and the first to be written in French by a women for the use of women. 

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Aglaé Adanson (1775-1852) was the daughter of the naturalist Michel Adanson, and it was to him that she dedicated the work for which she is chiefly remembered: not a book, but the foundation of the arboretum at Balaine in 1804, which was the first botanical gardens in France to be dedicated to tropical plants. La maison de campagne was her first book, and met with such success that further editions appeared in 1825, 1830, 1836, 1845, and 1852). Opening with a sketch of the advantages of the rural life, and a discussion of the age at which one might reasonably decide to live one, and how far from the nearest town one should live, Adanson continues with advice on how to arrange one’s house, the care of fruit trees, outbuildings such as doocots, dairies, and granaries, and the choice of domestic staff. Further chapters address accounts, pond-making and maintenance, and the necessity of having a medicine cabinet, before a lengthy section on cooking (’La petite cuisinière de la maison de campagne’), giving techniques and recipes for meats and fish, sauces, soups, vegetables, eggs, jam- making, syrups and more, complete with its own index of recipes. This leads on to advice on the keeping of a kitchen garden, the growing of fruit, and the maintenance of an orangery. 

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The present copy is notable for containing the two folding talbes and four plates often missing (as they are in, for instance, the copy in the BnF). 

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OCLC records only one copy of this edition outside Continental Europe, at the Library of Congress.