Good Things in England.

London, Toronto, New York: Jonathan Cape,, 1932. First edition, first printing, with the scarce dust jacket, of this classic book by the founder of the English Folk Cookery Association. This work stands alongside Dorothy Hartley's Food in England as a crucial text in the English cookery revival of the early 20th century. It contains regional gathered through the knowledge sharing networks of the Association, as well as numerous traditional favourites found through White's scholarly research. White (1863-1940) founded the Association in 1928 and in 1932 published Good Things in England, her manifesto for the merit of traditional English cooking. Her work coincided with a wider folk movement, with song collectors such as Cecil Sharp, dance collectors such as Mary Neal, and fellow food writer Dorothy Hartley all contributing to a resurgent interest in the seemingly lost traditions of England. White's writing contains regional specialities as well as numerous traditional favourites, encompassing recipes from the England of Chaucer's time right up to the modern day. The association's Good Food Registers are a prime example of the networks of knowledge key to the movement and contained information passed on by contributors about towns, villages, hotels, restaurants, or even humble guest houses in which good English cooking or foodstuffs could be found. Born in 1863, White's somewhat unhappy childhood, shopping "economically for food (since the family was by then poor), waiting on her uncongenial stepmother, and teaching the three small children of her father's third marriage" (ODNB), was relieved when she was sent to Fareham "to nurse her father's two elderly sisters, formerly proprietors of the Lion Hotel and Assembly Rooms. From them she learned that 'good epicurean country-house cookery which had been handed down the family from mother to daughter since the days of Queen Elizabeth'. Her return to Fareham towards the end of her life, when she opened a cookery school there, was directly inspired by her memories of learning traditional English cooking techniques, an accomplishment of which she never ceased to be proud". Only when in her sixties "living in frugal semi-retirement in a Chelsea basement room" supported by freelance journalism, did Florence formally begin to research her lifelong passion, good, traditional English food. Octavo. Original beige cloth, titles to spine in blue, blue top-stain. With unclipped typographical dust jacket. Frontispiece and 3 other plates. Very slight flaking of spine lettering, just a touch cocked, spine of the jacket mildly tanned and a little crumpled with a few tiny splits head and tail, very short closed tear at the head of the front panel, endpapers lightly browned, a very good copy in like jacket. Bitting p.493