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BOOKS FOR SALE

Roxburghe Club publications are produced in two states. Each member of the Club receives a copy bound in half calf. In the list of members of the Club, each recipient's name is printed in red ink. Normally, not more than 42 copies are printed in this form. Additionally a member can print up to 300 copies of the title usually bound in cloth. These are available for sale, usually through the antiquarian bookdealers listed below.

Maggs Bros., 48 Bedford Square, London WC1B 3DR
Telephone: + 44 (0) 20 7493 7160
Fax: + 44 (0) 20 7499 2007
Email: robert@maggs.com
Attention of: Robert Harding

Bernard Quaritch Limited, 36 Bedford Row, Holborn, London WC1R 4JH
Telephone: + 44 (0) 20 7297 4888
Fax: + 44 (0) 20 7297 4866
Email: rarebooks@quaritch.com

THE TOLLEMACHE BOOK OF SECRETS.

Sale Notes

Price: £390.00

Sale Vendor

Maggs

Notes

A Descriptive Index and complete Facsimile, together with Catherine Tollemache's Receipts of Pastery, Confectionary &c. Edited by Jeremy Griffiths and A.S.G. Edwards. The Roxburghe Club, 2001. The volume contains full facsimiles of both manuscripts plus introduction, transcriptions of the texts and a translation of the ‘Treatise of Fishing with an Angle’. Pp. 301, including 137 facsimile pages. 4to., quarter tan morocco, blue cloth sides with Tollemache arms in gilt on upper cover, gilt lettering on spine, 2002. The earliest known treatise in English on angling is contained in the Tollemache Book of Secrets which was written before the famous text in the Boke of St Albans (1496). A remarkable manuscript written at the turn of the fifteenth century, the Book of Secrets is a miscellany of practical instructions assembled for the use of the Tollemache household at Helmingham. Written predominantly in Middle English, this fascinating record of everyday life in early modern England gives advice and directions for domestic tasks and pastimes including gardening, fishing. lacemaking, carving, creating medicines for humans and hawks, mixing dyes, ink and glue, making charms and prognostications, restoring dovecots and shirt-making. A substantial part of the book is taken up with gardening; this includes a unique text by Nicholas Bollard on growing and grafting fruit trees, instructions on planting herbs, and a set of drawings of ‘knots’ and other diagrams for beds and borders. The drawings are among the earliest of their kind and combined with the text provide clear and practical information on the making of gardens in England five centuries ago. Indeed they have been used by the present Lady Tollemache to restore the gardens at Helmingham Hall. Catherine Tollemache’s Receipts of Pastery, Confectionary &c. gives Lord Tollemache’s book a balance as there is little pertaining to cookery in the Book of Secrets. The Receipts dates from around the beginning of the seventeenth century and includes some superb jam, marmalade, fruit and pastry recipes all of which are easy to follow from the Middle English transcriptions as is an extraordinary early recipe for biscotti.

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