THE NOVEL THAT LAUNCHED THE BELOVED MRS. APPLEYARD COOKBOOKS, SIGNED BY LOUISE ANDREWS KENT

KENT, Louise Andrews. Mrs. Appleyard's Year. Cambridge, Massachusetts: Houghton Mifflin… Riverside Press, (1941). Octavo, original blue-gray cloth, original dust jacket. $650.

First edition of the novel that inspired Kent's critically praised series of cookbooks and awakened fresh interest in New England life and cuisine, signed on the half title by her.

To James Beard, as well as many famous cookbook authors and chefs, Louise Andrews Kent revolutionized America's appreciation for rural life and cooking. In addition to her popular historical fiction, magazine articles and columns, Kent's fame was especially centered on the "very successful Appleyard series that flowered from the 1941 best-seller, Mrs. Appleyard's Year… She invented Mrs. Appleyard to be 'plump, rosy, and cute'… a wonderfully motherly, easy-going, adaptable and witty woman," whose popularity with readers sparked an influential series of cookbooks (Warner, Province of Reason, 176-7). In 1942 James Beard named Kent one of the "four famous gourmets" he chose to name their favorite cookbooks. Precedes a book guild edition in orange boards with a brown-and-gold background design on dust jacket. Bookseller ticket.

Book fine; light edge-wear, slight dampstaining to scarce extremely good dust jacket.