The Dinner Year-Book

New York: Charles Scribner's Sons, 1878. Octavo (19.5 x 13 cm.), 713, [2] pages. Publisher's advertisements. FIRST EDITION, "Common Sense in the Household Series" issue; identical to the first regular issue but on cheaper paper stock, and lacking the six chromolithograph illustrations. Menus for every day of the year with recipes for each. Harland (pseudonym of Mary Virginia Terhune) attempts "To accomplish an agreeable variety in the family bill of fare." Her list of goals is long, but includes: "to build fragments into a structure about which should linger no flavor or staleness or sameness; so as to manage a long succession of meals that yesterday's repast and the more frugal one of to-day should not suggest the alternation of fat and lean in the Hibernian's pork, or the dutiful following of penance upon indulgence ; to shun, with equal care, the rock of parsimony and the whirlpool of extravagance..." Pages darkened throughout; pages approaching brittle. In edgeworn and soiled green cloth, blind and gilt stamped. Good. [Bitting, page 214; Brown 2402; Cagle 330; Wheaton & Kelly 5945].