The South African Household Guide
Cape Town, Darter Bros & Co, 1913. Glossop, Allerley. The South African Household Guide. (5th Ed). Darter Bros & Co: Cape Town, 1913. 8vo (195x130mm) light tan printed, illust stiff card wrappers, v,[1],7-348pp. Wrappers faintly soiled, owner name to ffep; faint foxing & agetoning
Second-hand softcover
BARNES, A R [ Mrs William G Barnes] and GLOSSOP, ALLERLEY [ Alice Emma Harriet (1870-1955)]
The South African Household Guide containing practical hints on plain cooking, with recipes; useful general hints; medical advice to mothers. etc.; household work; notes for farmers to which have been added special articles on hygiene, physical culture, dairying, gardening, and poultry.
Cape Town : Darter Bros. & Co, 1913. Fifth edition, revised and enlarged. First published in 1889 as "The Colonial Household Guide". ¹ Printed by Ballantyne & Company at the Ballantyne Press, London.
Octavo (195x130mm) tan, black printed and illustrated, stiff card wrappers, flush-cut edges, heavy cream paper, two-column text, v,[1],348pp : [A⁸(-A8)], B - X⁸, Y⁸(-Y8). Spine lightly creased and worn, small loss to head and tail; wrappers faintly soiled, corners gently bruised, small split to front joint, hinge fine; owner name in ink to front free end-paper "E Hindley"; bookseller ticket "Cooks Books T & M McKirdy" to rear paste down; a few folded corners; occasional signs of kitchen use, particularly in the pudding section; scattered light foxing, mostly to the margins and edges; pages lightly age-toned.
¶ Not much is know about Mrs Barnes, the author of the first four editions, other than that she was 'a housewife of the colony'. The book was one of the earliest cookery books published in English in South Africa. Allerley Glossop was an artist who emigrated from Britain. She arrived in the Colony in 1902 and was a farmer in the Wellington Western Cape area until 1917 when she moved to Johannesburg. Glossop, as single woman, challenged Cape society by wearing mens' clothes, a pith helmet, smoking a pipe and by often riding alone into remote areas to paint. She was a highly regarded landscape and pastoral painter and many of her works are held in South African institutions.
The first twenty-one chapters deal with cookery. There are specimen menus, with one page devoted to a menu of local traditional dishes. The 1163 recipes are a mixture of British, Dutch, German, Indian and Malay-Indian together with a number of traditional South African dishes such as Babote, Brede, Sasaatjes, Soetkock biscuits, Most Bolletjes Cakes, Biltong, Curried and Pickled Fish. Indigenous local fish, fruits and vegetables are mentioned. Curries, tamarind pulp, mealies are all included. There is not much mention of game or 'bush meat' but Ostrich eggs are a substitute in baking and Penguin eggs are an option for breakfast.
The remaining twelve chapters provide 440 eminently practical entries on hygiene, health, medicine, household and kitchen management and farm commentary including instructions on how to build a traditional African co-dung floor.
Scarce in any edition. An excellent copy of a classic early South African household and cookery manual illustrating the unique blend of influences on colonial Afrikaans households.
§ OCLC records only eleven holdings this edition, Harvard, BL and the rest in South Africa.
§ cf Mendelssohn, p.83 1st Ed; cf Bitting, p.28, 4th Ed. Not in Driver, nor Theal.
¹ First published 1899, with only 156pp. Successive editions in 1890, 1899, 1907 and 1913 were each enlarged.
Item #10833
Price: $300.00 AUD