Vegetarian Haggis, Goffering, and Table Setting: Two Bibliographies of Cookery and Household Books

REVIEW ARTICLES VEGETARIAN HAGGIS, GOFFERING, AND TABLE SETTING: TWO BIBLIOGRAPHIES OF COOKERY AND HOUSEHOLD BOOKS Dena Attar. A Bibliography ofHouseholdBooks Published in Britain, 18001914 . (Cookery and Household Books PubUshed in Britain, 1800-1914: 1) London: Prospect Books, 1987. Elizabeth Driver. Cookery Books Published in Britain, 1875-1914. (Cookery and Household Books PubUshed in Britain, 1800-1914: 2) London and New York: Prospect Books in association with Mansell PubUshing, 1989. Distributed in the United States by Books International, 13950 Park Center Road, Herndon, VA 22071. Telephone: (703) 4357064 . The literature of domestic Ufe in England was first used by eighteenthcentury antiquarieswho found in household accounts, cookery manuscripts, and early printed cookbooks colorful material to enliven their views of Ufe in Metrie England. Samuel Pegge, in 1780, and Richard Warner, in 1790, published their editions of the Forme of Cury, a late fourteenth-century cookery manuscript. The household accounts of the Percys of Northumberland were published by Henry Algernon Percy as Regulations and EstabUshment of the Houshold of Henry Algernon Percy in 1770. In the nineteenth century it was the turn of philologists, who found in such works unique sources for specialized words and usages. F. J. FurnivaU and his associates pubUshed John Russell ' s Boke ofNurture and similar books on domestic management and etiquette in the 1860s, while Thomas Austin ' s Two Fifteenth-century Cookery Books appeared in 1888. The first bibliographical essay to appear was WilUam Carew HazUtt ' s Old Cookery Books andAncient Cuisine (1886), an enthusiastic ifuncritical introduction to that field. Further steps were taken in 1913 when A. W. Oxford published his Notes from a Collector's Catalogue, with a Bibliography ofEnglish CookingBooks, and, in 1913,£>ig/¿sA CookeryBooks to the Year 1850. The latter is far from complete, and it breaks off far too soon, but it was the best bibliography that we had until the Prospect Books bibliographies were pubUshed. I should note that Katherine G. Bitting 's BARBARA WHEATON41 Gastronomic Bibliography (1939) lists additional works, and Lavonne B. Axford's English Language Cookbooks, 1600-1973 includes books published in Canada and the United States as well, but the entries are of necessity quite terse. The earlier studies and bibliographies tended to emphasize the practices of the aristocracy and of large households. Today we are interested in all classes. In recent years several different fields of research have converged on British domestic Ufe and manners. Women ' s studies specialists have examined the lives of domestics and their employers, and their relationships with each other. Historians of the family have studied the structures, economics, and strategies of households. SpeciaUsts in the history of art and architecture, and historians of medicine and of technology have followed the changes over time that style, social custom, and technology brought to family life. Students of the history of food in society have turned to cookery and household books for detailed information about how the craft developed, and how attitudes and aspirations shaped the way food was prepared and eaten. Dena Attar points out that the "books also present a previously unexplored perspective on the publishing history of one of the first great mass markets in books" as well as the spread of literacy. In 1981 Prospect Books pubUshed Virginia MacLean'Sv4 Catalogue of Household & Cookery Books Published in the English Tongue, 1701-1800, which immediately replaced Oxford's bibliography for the time and subject range it addresses. It has served as prototype for this subsequent series, "Cookery and Household Books Published in Britain, 1800-1914," under the editorship of Lynette Hunter, lecturer in bibliography and publishing history at the University of Leeds. Prospect Books, the creation of Alan Davidson, first attracted attention for its Petits Propos Culinaires, published three times a year, a journal which brings its subscribers the latest research into the history and geography of foods, book reviews, and, as the television advertisements say, more. In addition, Prospect Books publish facsimile editions of English cookery books, such as Hannah Glasse ' s Art of Cookery, and books on the cuisines of less-known places, such as Nepal. Hunter, Attar, and Driver have been ingenious in seeking out material, appealing for information about titles through such unorthodox channels as BBC Radio...