‘The most comprehensive, the most practical, and the most readable of the many books of instruction written for women in the early seventeenth century’ (Best). Although it has its own title page and separate pagination, this edition of The English House-Wife was published alongside five other works by Markham in the twelfth edition of a popular guide to country occupations, titled A Way to Get Wealth. ‘It is wide-ranging in its record of the multitude of day-to-day household activities, and at the same time precise in the careful particularity of its advice’. See Bitting p.309.

Quarto (191 x 143mm). (One small hole and short closed tear in title, one short marginal tear, browning and occasional stains.) Modern antique-style leather gilt. Provenance: Adam Bromhead (early inscription on 3X1r) – Cooks Books, Brighton (bookseller’s label on rear pastedown) – Albert Roux (bookplate on front pastedown).