The Art of Cookery
In Imitation of Horace's Art of Poetry. WITH SOME LETTERS TO Dr. LISTER, and Others: Occasion'd principally by the Title of a Book publish'd by the Doctor, being the works of Apicius Coelius, Concerning the Soups and Sauces of the Antients. With an Extract of the greatest Curiosities contain'd in that Book. To which is added, HORACE'S Art of Poetry, in Latin. By the Author of the Journey to LONDON. Humbly inscrib'd to the Honourable BEEF STEAK CLUB. LONDON: Printed for BERNARD LINTOTT at the Cross-Keys between the two Temple Gates in Fleet Street. Undated.
FIRST AUTHORIZED EDITION. n/d [1708]. Octavo (7.5 by 5 inches). 2fep. Half Title. [1] Title Page. [1] 4pp The Publisher to the Reader. 1-160. 2fep. Bound in black half calf with cloth boards and calf corners. Spine with raised bands, gilt lines and gilt lettering. Internally clean however with some slight browning to Half title and title and last leaf. A nice copy of a scarce book.
- There is a little, amusing, early typewritten note tipped in that states; 'The poem is in Latin, with an English paraphrase, full of good sense. Our English restaurateurs might mark the following couplet, referring to the greatest deficiency of our restaurants: 'Tis the Desert that graces all the Feast, for an ill end disparages the rest.' William King (1663-1712), English poet and miscellaneous writer. He was educated at Westminster School under Dr Busby, and at Christ Church, Oxford. His first literary enterprise was a defense of Wycliffe, written in conjunction with Sir Edward Hannes (d. 1710) and entitled Reflections upon Mons. Vaiillas's History of Heresy.. . (1688). He became known as a humorous writer on the Tory and High Church side. His chief poems are: The Art of Cookery: in imitation of Horace's Art of Poetry. With some Letters to Dr Lister and Others (1708), one of his most amusing works; The Art of Love; in imitation of Ovid ... (1709); "Mully of Mountoun," and a burlesque "Orpheus and Eurydice." A volume of Miscellanies in Prose and Verse appeared in 1705; his Remains.. . were edited by J. Brown in 1732; and in 1776 John Nichols produced an excellent edition of his Original Works with Historical Notes and Memoirs of the Author (see item #11281 below). Dr Johnson included him in his Lives of the Poets, and his works appear in subsequent collections.
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Antiquarian category
ref number:
10939