OP: The Alice B. Toklas Cook Book
Harper & Brothers, 1954. Hardcover. Very Good/Good Minus. First printing, thus.
When The Autobiography of Alice B. Toklas was published in 1933, its author was none other than Gertrude Stein, writing in the voice of her long-time partner, Alice Toklas (1877–1967), a retiring woman in her mid-fifties who found herself rapidly projected into celebrity.
More a vehicle for Stein’s literary imagination than a factual account of Toklas’ life, The Autobiography made Toklas into a public figure, if one always a bit enigmatic. Although she did participate in their well-known salons with artists, writers, and musicians, she remained, for the most part, withdrawn, tending to devote herself to maintaining the Stein household, managing their financial affairs and other practical matters.
Upon Stein’s death in 1946, legal difficulties over the estate forced Toklas to earn a living as best she could. She did a good deal of writing, including a cookbook, published in 1954. It does, indeed, offer many fine recipes (mostly French home cooking), but it is a book that can—and should—be read.
A small sample from the time of her early cooking efforts, when she was compelled to dispatch a live carp she had bought in the market, does not disappoint. Unwilling to use the traditional method of slamming its head onto her kitchen table, or to bop it on the head with a mallet, she agonized, and then:
A heavy, sharp knife came to my mind as the classic, the perfect choice, so grasping with my left hand … the lower jaw of the carp, and the knife in my right, I carefully, deliberately found the base of the vertebral column and plunged the knife in. I let go my grasp and looked to see what had happened. Horror of horrors. The carp was dead, killed, assassinated, murdered in the first, second, and third degree. Limp, I fell into a chair, with my hands still unwashed, reached for a cigarette, lighted it, and waited for the police to come and take me into custody.
Perhaps most famously, the book’s first UK edition included a recipe for hashish fudge, which was excluded by the more puritanical American publishers until the 1960s.
This is one truly satisfying book—and we are pleased to be offering the first US printing (sorry, potheads), which was published two days later than the true first UK edition. This copy has a beautifully clean book block, though the head of the case’s spine shows softening and wear. The handsome jacket is soiled, price clipped, and missing a fair amount of paper but, happily, the front and rear panels are mostly intact. (Also available in paperback).
