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First edition of this comprehensive pocket guide to the art and craft of the perfumer, including a wide variety of eaux, pommades, scented vinegars, soaps and cosmetic remedies (including toothpaste) almost all derived from plants and flowers. Madame Gaçon-Dufour (1753-c.1835) ‘was co-founder of Bibliothèque Agronomique; novels include L’Homme errant fixé par la raison (1787), Le Préjugé vaincu (1787), Georgeana (1798), Melicrete et Zirphile (1802), and Les Dangers de la prévention (1806); wrote essays in defense of women’s rights, including Mémoire pour le sexe féminin contre le sexe masculin (1787), Contre le projet de loi de S.M. (1801), and De la nécessité de l’instruction pour les femmes (1805); also edited collections of letters, wrote manuals on domestic and rural economy, and published trade manuals for pastry chefs, soap-makers, and perfumiers’ (Dictionary of Women Worldwide, online). Manuel du parfumeur was issued in printed wrappers (preserved in some copies) and with differing publisher’s adverts (or none at all). Ours is bound without wrappers in a pleasing contemporary binding, with eight pages of adverts for Roret’s ‘Collection de manuels formant une Encyclopédie des sciences et des arts. Format in-18’ (including the Manuel du parfumeur priced at 2 francs 50 centimes).

A wonderful satire on contemporary women’s fashion. The 1820s had seen considerable change in women’s fashions, with neoclassical straight lines and sparse adornments giving way to a more exhuberant and romantic style with more emphasis on curvaceous shapes, cheekily satirised here with wine glass and fruit.�
An inverted wine-glass (claret shape), partly fluted, represents a woman; the bowl is a bell-shaped petticoat, the stem a pinched waist and bodice; the wide base forms the brim of her plateau-hat on which stands a cork with a metal rim and upstanding ring to form the narrow jam-pot crown. On the base (or brim) are bunches of grapes from which hang trails of vine leaves. Tied symmetrically to the stem are two pears, representing inflated sleeves, the stalks serving for wrists and hands. Below the design: ‘Turn a tumbler up side down / The foot for a hat and a cork for the crown /Some grapes for trimming, will give an air / And as for Sleeves have ready a pear /When join'd to gather tis sure to tell /A picture true, of a modern belle’.

The 'P. P.' of the signature reads: ‘what have we got here by Jove what we are all fond of a Lass & à Glass my service to you Gents tis but a frail fair after all’. BM Satires 15611.

First edition in French and slightly revised edition of the author’s 1922 classic, Cocktails. How to Mix Them, which was notably the first book to print the recipe for the Sidecar. Vermeire, one of the most influential cocktail personalities of the past century, was a Belgian bartender who plied his trade in London during the European Golden Age before opening ‘Roberts’ in his home town of Knokke, Belgium. The volume includes recipes for Slings, Fizzes, Cobblers as well as recipes for medicinal drinks, such as the usual hot toddy for a cold, but also absinthe for a headache and champagne for seasickness. A very pleasing copy of this classic cocktail book.�

A classic pre-Prohibition American cocktail book. Jacob ‘Jack’ Grohusko was the head bartender at Baracca’s restaurant in New York, having been born in England to a Russian Jewish family and brought to New York as an infant. Jack’s Manual has 17 pages on the different types of wine (particularly champagne, sauternes and burgundies) and liquor, and 61 pages of recipes for cocktails.

This 1910 edition was preceded by a very rare 1908 edition (NLM and LC only in Worldcat). Jack’s was the first cocktail book to include the Brooklyn, perhaps his own creation, and several others which would be immortalised in the much later Savoy Cocktail Book (1930).

A very scarce early temperance movement sermon. ‘The use of liquor is inconsistent with any thing like pure and high spiritual enjoyment, clear spiritual views, and true devotion...’. Published in New York in the National Preacher in 1831 and rapidly reprinted within just a few months in several editions in London, where the Temperance movement was in its infancy. The British and Foreign Temperance Society issued its first report in 1831 (an extract is reproduced on p. 16 here). Worldcat/LibraryHub locate only a handful of copies of all issues, American and British (the former being extracts from the National Preacher).

A very neat collection of popular songs, most from the 1850s, of the sort circulated in ephemeral printed and manuscript song sheets. Highlights include: Est-ce le hatchich qui t’a mis comme ça: an uncommon reference to hashish in this context, and a song (in common with several others in the manuscript) for which we can find no printed source. Sung to the tune of ‘Aÿ chiquita’, this is a woman’s complaint to her suitor, with the chorus:

‘Est-ce l’absinthe, ou bien encore,
Le hatchich qui t’as mis, dis-moi,
Dans cet état que j’aborre,
Et tu veux m’aimer! Ah! Tais-toi.’

This is hardly Baudelaire, but a pleasing contemporary parallel to Les Paradis artificiels.

Others include Les Cris de Paris, Les Chemins de fer and Les Anges de la charité ou les inondés de 1856 and there are songs attributable to Pierre Dupont and Charles Durand, both popular in the 1850s and 60s. Some are in dialect and typically, the subjects tend towards love, drink and gastronomy, but there are also a couple alluding to the language of flowers. The compilation is scrupulously neat—and is presumably, in part, an exercise in penmanship.

Four rare perfume labels, colour printed ‘à la poupée’ with floral designs: Extrait de Rose et de Pois de senteur, Extrait de Jonquille, Extrait d’Oranges de Portugal, Extrait suave. The largest (Extrait de Rose includes a space below for a text or legend, uninked or cancelled in this example, but with traces of the engraved text visible. A charming and rare example of this colour printing technique in which each impression contains all the colours at once, with inks carefully applied to the plate with a cushion-headed tool (the ‘poupée’ or doll). The technique is immediately recognisable from the gentle gradations between the various colours of the resulting imprint.

Compiled in the town of Popovo in the wine-growing region of North Eastern Bulgaria, this souvenir album was compiled by a federation of three local temperance societies and given to one ‘Monsieur Dr. P. Legrain’. Most of the photographic postcards depict society outings, with large groups of men, women and children usually in outdoor settings in all seasons (including what appear to be very harsh winters). Several of the photographs were taken at harvest time, with copious bunches of grapes in evidence. The context of the presentation is not immediately obvious, though may be apparent in the three long inscriptions in Bulgarian accompanied by the purple inkstamps of each of the societies.

Second edition (first 1724) of Hoffmann’s “Complete Instruction for a safe, sensible and medically respected practice of medicine”: a very extensive baroque medical compendium.

Friedrich Hoffmann (1660-1742), a German physician, practised and taught medicine, chemistry and physics in Halle from 1693. He studied and wrote on such varied topics as paediatrics, mineral waters and meteorology and introduced many new drugs into medical practice (such as a compound spirit of ether branded “Anodyne” and “Hoffmanns-Tropfen” still today known as a household remedy). Hoffmann was among the first to describe several diseases, including appendicitis and German measles, and to recognize the regulatory role of the nervous system.

The work contains examinations of common ailments such as fever, infections, haemorrhaging, cramps, spasms and convulsions, consideration of the cerebral and nervous system, lymph and glands, female complaints and childhood illnesses. It also includes numerous medicinal recipes and cures. Not in Wellcome (the catalogue lists the first edition only); the NLM online catalogue lists the first edition of 1724 and another of 1743 only.

First American edition. Published one year after the English first but suprisingly much scarcer with no copies listed in copac. The volume provides a miscellany of anecdotes on food, drink, dining, coffeehouses, and cafes.