The Alice B. Toklas Cook Book. London, 1954.

First edition. 8vo. xi. 288pp. Toklas’s cookbook was considered an unusual departure from standard cookery at the time of its publication for its memoir style, and for its many asides diversions. Rex Stout reviewed it glowingly upon publication.

It triumphantly contains surrealist artist Brion Gysin’s pot brownie recipe, under the moniker Haschich Fudge - ‘which anyone could whip up on a rainy day’. The daring recipe did not go without notice, and was cut from all future editions, making the first edition notable in every way beyond its impressive and careful documentation of 350 recipes. The food is often French, (Toklas having lived in France with Gertrude Stein until Stein’s death in 1946), but described in a way that takes American enthusiasms and culinary habits into account, as Julia Child would later do as well.

Toklas was the celebrated modernist Gertrude Stein's life partner, and together they hosted their famous salon of everyone who was everyone in the Parisian art scene including Braque, Fitzgerald, Hemingway, Matisse, and Picasso, and they financially supported many artists and writers as well. Toklas did not publish her own writing until after Stein’s death, and it became one of the ways she supported herself, after the possessions that Stein willed to her, like the Picassos, were stolen by relatives when she was out of town, their lesbian relationship of course having no legal bearing on inheritance at the time.

The lovely illustration on the book jacket by Sir Francis Rose, featuring a muted watercolour and gouache rendering of fruit and botanticals as well as a French country house and side portrait of Toklas. Rose was the husband of Dorothy Carrington, and he also contributed the beautiful black and white illustrations for the book.

Heavy grain oatmeal cloth with pictorial jacket. Gilt illustrations and title on green background. Some darkening and wear to the jacket spine, with small loss to the head. Slight marks jacket front and tape marks to the flaps. The rear free end page has a now un-folded fold. Minor marks to the boards and slight darkening to the head. Binding firm and generally internally clean, a few small tape marks and spots to the illustrated endpapers. A very good copy in a truly wonderful jacket. Scarce.