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First edition. The Gin Act (or ‘Tippling Act’) of 1751 was designed to reduce consumption of raw spirits — regarded by contemporaries as one of the main causes of crime in London. By prohibiting gin distillers from selling to unlicensed merchants and increasing fees charged to merchants, it eliminated small gin shops, thereby restricting the distribution of gin to larger distillers and retailers. It was widely supported, not least by William Hogarth, who issued his famous Beer Street and Gin Lane prints in the same year. ‘Hogarth's illustration of the evils of gin-drinking was published as a pair with ‘Beer Street’, as part of a campaign against the uncontrolled production and sale of cheap gin. It culminated in the Gin Act of 1751, through which the number of gin shops was greatly reduced’ (Tate Gallery).

Though separately published with a general title for a complete sitting of Parliament, individual Acts of Parliament were paginated to be bound together in yearly volumes hence the pagination 975-995 here. ESTC N52491 (NLS, New College Oxford, UCLA Clark and Kansas only, though copies are under-recorded since they are often catalogued within volumes and sets of the Acts of Parliament.).

A record of dinners given and attended by a prominent British diplomat and his wife in Berlin and Vienna in the years of the French Revolutionary Wars. Completed on an almost daily basis, the ‘Dinner Book’ lists the names of all the attendees, including many of the key figures in Prussian and Austrian diplomacy, as well as representatives of Great Britain, Russia, Italy, Spain, Portugal and the United States. Emigré French nobles also completed many of the tables. The dinners range from state balls and dinners to ‘great’ and ‘little’ suppers given by Eden himself. In Berlin, the Edens were frequent guests at the court of Prussian King Frederick William II and his Queen, while at Vienna the Prince of Stahremberg was a frequent host. British dining companions included Sir Watkin Williams Wynne, the Duke of Buccleuch, Lord Henry Spencer, Sir Robert Cotton and Lord Dalkeith. French guests included the emigré duc de Richelieu, Louis de la Trémouille, Armand de Polignac and on 11 November 1797 in Vienna Eden notes: ‘Dinner was given to the Duke d’Enghien, who stayed here 3 days on his way to Russia...’ As a member of the House of Bourbon Enghien commanded a corps of emigrés established by the Prince de Condé and he was later executed by Napoleon for collaboration with the British. Also among Eden’s acquaintances in Vienna was American statesman Gouverneur Morris, who was in Vienna in the autumn of 1796 as American Minister Plenipotentary to France. He is noted in Eden’s book as ‘Mr Morris — American’ and dined with him at least six times.
The dinners form the diplomatic and social background to the negotiations concerning the balance of power in Europe during the French Revolutionary Wars — on 4 May 1795, for example, Eden had signed a treaty with Austrian chancellor, guaranteeing a loan of £4,600,000 to Austria for fielding 170,000 troops in Germany against France.
Educated at Eton and Christchurch, Oxford, Eden was appointed ‘envoy-extraordinary and minister-plenipotentiary at the court of Berlin. He was nominated a knight of the Bath on 16 December 1791 and, at the special request of George III, was publicly invested with the insignia of the order by the king of Prussia on 1 January 1792. In February he very readily proceeded to Vienna as ambassador to the emperor of Austria for a year, and on 12 November 1794 he was sworn in a privy councillor, and, after reluctantly agreeing to be dispatched to Madrid as ambassador-extraordinary, he was reappointed envoy-extraordinary to Vienna to negotiate the war loan to the emperor. He remained in the Austrian capital for five years’ (Oxford DNB).

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 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.