The Joy of Cooking

Indianapolis: Bobbs-Merrill Company, 1936. Patterned Cloth. Near Fine/Near Fine. Marion Rombauer Becker. An exceptional copy of the May 1936 1st trade edition of arguably the 20th century's most iconic American cookbook. THIS COPY BOASTS A WARM, FULL-PAGE INSCRIPTION BY ITS AUTHOR IRMA S. ROMBAUER along the front free endpaper AND IS IN REMARKABLY CRISP, CLEAN CONDITION TO BOOT. Tight and Near Fine (just a touch of very light soiling along the edges) in a bright, price-intact ($2.75), easily Near Fine dustjacket, with just the slightest hint of faint creasing to the top-edges and the spine crown. Still though, unusually attractive and well-preserved. One could even imagine, of the 10,000 copies initially published (Mendelson 151-161), this copy would certainly rank, if not at the very top, among a tiny handful of elite copies somehow to have survived in such superb condition. Thick octavo, illustrated in woodblock by the author's daughter Marion Rombauer Becker. One of the few cookbooks, in its original format, to have transcended its place as a culinary collectible into the ranks of important Americana.