Shackleford.   Mrs Ann     - The very rare Dublin imprint.
THE Modern Art of Cookery IMPROVED:
OR, Elegant, cheap, and Easy Methods, of preparing most of the Dishes now in Vogue; In the Composition whereof Both Health and Pleasure have been consulted. BY Mrs Ann Shackleford, of Winchester. TO WHICH IS ADDED. An APPENDIX; Containing a Dissertation on the different Kinds of Food, their Nature, Quality, and various Uses. By a PHYSICIAN. AND A MARKETING MANUAL, And other useful Particulars. By the EDITOR. ----- She turns, on hospitable thoughts intent, What choice to chuse for delicacy best; What order, so contriv’d as not to mix Tastes, not well join’d, inelegant, but bring Taste after Taste, upheld with kindliest change. MILTON. ----- DUBLIN: Printed for William Colles, in Dame-Street. [c. 1771]
12mo. 1fep. 2p Advertisements. Title Page. [1] iii-iv Preface. (1)vi – xxiii Marketing Manual. xxiv – xxiii. xxiv - xxv 2 pages of Marketing Tables. [1] 1-281. P15 Index. 1fep. Modern binding with half brown cloth with gilt tooling separating the marbled boards. Gilt lines on the spine and two black leather labels with gilt writing. Very light age browning to the first and last few pages and some minor staining to some of the pages. Overall, a nice bright copy of a very elusive book.
- Nothing is known about Mrs Ann Shackleford but her cookery books appear to be extremely scarce. MacLean [p130] displays Mrs Shackleton’s title page of the first English addition of 1767 and interestingly, reckons it has a crafty worded description in “Modern Cookery Improved”. She also notes that Milton’s quote gives the mere cookbook a literary fillip. MacLean also cites a Dublin edition that had been owned by the BLB, undated without printer’s details but destroyed. (Confirmed in a letter from the BL Ref. Div. to MacLean). She also references (Pub. Adv. of 23rd Jan 1771) another London edition of 1771 printed for T. Carnan and F. Newbury. Oxford also notes an undated Dublin edition. Cagle has an English first of 1767 but unusually misquotes Oxford as stating the London edition instead of the Dublin one. Besides MacLean, all of the other bibliographies give sketchy or no information about this Dublin edition. One must assume great scarcity.

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ref number: 11116