8vo., Tenth Edition [styled 'Ninth Edition' on title], on laid paper, free endpapers mildly browned, title lightly dust-soiled, some mild and inoffensive age-staining (principally at fore-margins and edges); in SIGNED BINDING BY BIRDSALL OF NORTHAMPTON of nineteenth century cloth boards, tree calf back, backstrip with six gilt rules, second compartment with original leather label lettered and ruled in gilt, label worn but gilt mainly legible, uncut, sometime neatly recased with new endpapers to style, joints cracked (but binding entirely sound), a very good, crisp copy. Vernor and Hood [and many others], 1805 Charlotte Mason's important collection was first published in 1773 and Maclean records a further seven eighteenth-century editions. Bitting adds a Dublin imprint of 1778 as a result of which subsequent copies are one edition later than that stated, hence that with 'eighth edition' on title in actually the ninth (Cagle 864) and the present issue (styled 'ninth edition') is actually the tenth (see Cagle pp. 621-3). The present edition retains the introduction to the first edition, the advertisement to the sixth edition, and the appendix on poultry, the dairy, the kitchen and fruit gardens. Scarce in any early edition.
