English Housewifry by Elisabeth Moxon 1743
English Housewifry by Elisabeth Moxon 1743
Condition:
Spine with leather dry and would benefit with the application of a leather conditioner. Boards with some small areas of loss to the leather and some edge wear and rubbing across the joints. Joints are all secure and uncracked with both boards securely attached. Wear to corners with deformation. Scratches to rear board, relatively parallel to each other. Binding appears to probably be original to publication, or very close to publication and almost certainly before 1749 given an ink ownership inscription to front free endpaper dated 1749 from 'Mary', maybe the original purchaser directly from the author at Pontefract. Bookplate to front pastedown of A. Harrison Middleham and with a few other ownership inscriptions present. Slight warping to the binding but without shelf lean. Text block toned throughout with some sporadic and fairly minor stains occasionally obscuring a few letters of text with the vast majority of the text block fully legible. Occasional few edge chips to some leaves with pp.73-74 with some loss to text at edge. Leaf 105-106 (K5) torn lacking about 2/3rds of the leaf. A nail has been placed through pp.107-108 probably as a page marker. Several leaves are ripped but without loss to text. With 6 of the 8 plates at the rear (3 leaves of 4), lacking the leaf with the foldout. One plate leaf torn without loss and another torn lacking the upper portion. The book appears otherwise complete. I do always find it rather remarkable that cookbooks from nearly 300 years ago survive in any resemblance of good condition given how quickly a modern one gains stains, tears, etc!