A Handy book on Dinners; Dinners and Diners at Home and Abroad, by E.L. Blanchard, 1860

E.L. Blanchard’s A Handy Book on Dinners; Dinners and Diners at Home and Abroad (1860) is a witty and wide-ranging guide to the Victorian dining table. Subtitled "A Comprehensive Dining Directory for All Palates and All Pockets," it mixes serious advice with humorous reflections on eating habits in Britain and overseas, offering menus, etiquette notes, and anecdotes designed to entertain as well as instruct. The work is enlivened by a suite of comic illustrations described by the publisher as “piquant plates and choice cuts, comical, anatomical and gastronomical”, which lampoon both the excesses and the social rituals of dining.

Illustrated by Hablot K. Browne "Phiz," Dickens's celebrated illustrator.

This copy is bound in full polished calf, with the scarce original green paper wrappers bound in at the rear. Surviving wrappers are unusual: other recorded copies often appear in printed boards, suggesting that Adamson may have issued the book in more than one binding format.

A Handy book on Dinners; Dinners and Diners at Home and Abroad, by E.L. Blanchard With Piquant Plates and Choice Cuts, Comical, Anatomical and Gastronomical. Forming a Comprehensive Dining Directory for All Palates and All Pockets.

Published by W.R.H. Adamson, London, 1860. Presumed first edition.

A very good indeed full polished calf hardback with gilt tooled decoration and raised bands to spine. With light wear and rubbing to joints. With gilt dentelles inside, and blue endpapers with some minor cracking, but all soundly bound.

Text is clean and bright throughout With the original green paper wraps bound in at the rear. These have been rebacked onto paper. Scuffed and worn with some losses to front wrap, but scarce survivors.

118pp + (5) Advertisements + (2) Original printed Paper Wraps.

Dimensions: 

160mm high x 105mm wide x 14mm deep.

Weight approximately 196g.

References: Bitting, Gastronomic Bibliography (1939), p. 43.