OP: A Treasury of Great Recipes (signed)

Ampersand Press, Inc., 1965. Padded hardcover. Very Good Minus. Signed, first printing.

A highly popular, suave movie and TV actor, Vincent Price (1911–1993) was known for his thrillers and horror films, such as Diary of a Madman, The House on Haunted Hill, Theater of Blood, and The Fly. Another generation might remember him for his narration of Michael Jackson’s Thriller video or his last role as the inventor in 1990’s Edward Scissorhands. 

Beyond acting, Price was known as a skilled painter, an accomplished cook, and a globe-trotting connoisseur of good food. Written with his second wife, Mary, A Treasury of Great Recipes—published in 1965 in a luxurious edition with padded, gold stamped covers and printed on heavy tan paper—is a tribute to the western world’s great restaurants, including legendary or now-vanished establishments such as Fernand Point’s Le Pyramide in France, Lüchow’s in New York, and Scandia in Los Angeles. 

For anyone with an interest in the development of fine dining in the 20th century, this is a valuable resource.

The book was originally published by Ampersand Press and eventually distributed by Doubleday. Oddly, both of those editions bear the same copyright page, which states First Printing with no number line. We are offering here what we believe to be the true first printing, crediting only Ampersand on the title page. 

Our copy is in Very Good Minus condition, totally clean and crisp inside and retaining the ribbon markers, but the case is sun bleached along the top edge and the head of the spine is cracked and detached. This copy is signed “Mary and Vincent Price” in one (Vincent’s) elegant hand, and inscribed to Selma Robinson, a contributing editor of McCall’s magazine and The New Yorker, among other publications. Acquired from Robinson’s estate.

Full-page color photographs throughout represent the state-of-the-art of the day. Also still available in (a less-glamorous) reprint by Dover.