JOHNSON, Madam [Mary (active 1753 - 1772) compiler] 
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Madame Johnson's Present: or, the best instructions for young women in useful and universal knowledge. Digested under the following heads: I. The young woman's guide to letters and knowledge. II. The compleat market-woman. III. The cook's guide for dressing all sorts of flesh, fowl and fish. IV. For pickling, pastry and confectionary. V. An estimate of the expences of a family in the middling station of life. VI. The art and terms of carving fish, fowl, and flesh. VII. A bill of fare for every month in the year for dinner and supper, and also for extraordinary occasions. VIII. The young woman's instructor for the right spelling of words used in marketting, preserving , &c. With several useful tables, being the compleatest book of the kind ever published. London : Printed for H Owen, at the Britannia-Printing-Office, in White Friers, Fleet-street, 1759. Second edition, first published 1754¹. Price sewn, 1/3. bound 1/6. Duodecimo (160x100mm) contemporary stiff "antique spot" marbled paper wrappers, title-page printed in red and black, flush cut edges, rounded corners iv,192, [14]pp : [A]², B - R⁶, S⁶(- s4-s6),T4. Engraved frontispiece portrait of the author. Armorial bookplate of "Fanny Bridges" to the front pastedown; wrappers lightly scuffed, corners chipped; closed tears to L1 and L2; lacks three leaves in the index; edges agetoned; faint occasional foxing; two contemporary handwritten page markers for "raspberry vinegar" laid in.
¶ An uncommon early edition of an unusually comprehensive manual of female domestic education, combining instruction in literacy and arithmetic with marketing, cookery, household management, carving, confectionery and the conduct of a servant towards her mistress and employer. Mary Johnson was “for many years the superintendent of a Lady of Quality's family in the City of York”.² Her compilation is directed towards the practical education of young women, and is particularly notable for the breadth of knowledge expected of the competent eighteenth-century household servant. The cookery and marketing chapters run from pp. 72 to 181, approximately half the work, covering the preparation and preservation of meat, fish and vegetables, baking, cheese-making, pies, puddings, roasts, jellies and preserves, as well as instructions for marketing and household expenditure. The bills of fare and terminology of carving draw in part upon earlier household manuals, including Hannah Woolley's The Ladies Delight (1672). The work's intended readership is particularly interesting. Contemporary newspaper advertisements repeatedly promoted Madame Johnson's Present as “a very proper Christmas-Box or New Years Gift for Servant Maids”, suggesting that, although the book could be used by women seeking to improve their own practical and literary education, it was also deliberately marketed to the mistresses of substantial households as an appropriate gift for their female servants. Surviving bookseller and sales evidence provides some support for its acquisition by household servants themselves. The present copy belonged to Lady Fanny Bridges (1746–1825), née Fowler, of Goodnestone Park, Kent, wife of Sir Brook William Bridges. Through the marriage of her daughter Elizabeth to Edward Austen, she became Jane Austen's relation by marriage; Austen was a regular visitor to Goodnestone Park and is traditionally said to have begun First Impressions there in 1796, the novel subsequently published as Pride and Prejudice. The Bridges family association extends further into Austen's circle. Lady Bridges's granddaughter Fanny Knight, daughter of Edward Austen, was Jane Austen's favourite niece and a frequent correspondent. Another Fanny Bridges, a granddaughter of Lady Bridges's daughter, subsequently lived with the Dowager Lady Bridges at Goodnestone and has been proposed as one possible real-life parallel for Fanny Price, the heroine of Mansfield Park, although the identification remains conjectural. As such, the present provenance, places a practical manual of female literacy, household management and cookery within the library of a prominent Georgian Kentish household closely connected with Jane Austen and her family. Its presence at Goodnestone Park is particularly suggestive given the book's explicit concern with the training, conduct and practical accomplishments expected of women working within households of precisely this social class. A rare early edition, with an unusually evocative Austen-associated provenance, providing a remarkable glimpse into the practical education and domestic responsibilities expected of eighteenth-century women and household servants. § There are only two holdings in OCLC for this edition: 1759 Owen imprint, LOC ; 1759 Fuller imprint, Indiana. § Maclean pp.75-77, note 2; Axford p.256; Bitting p.247. cf, other editions: Cagle 782; Oxford, p.83 note; Vicaire 465; Lehmann pp.106-7. Not in ESTC; cf the Fuller imprint T170669. ¹ Cagle consistent with Maclean states, first published 1754 as "The Young Woman's Companion; or the Servant-Maid's Assistant", reprinted in 1755 with a new title and then twice reprinted in 1759 once with this imprint and once with the imprint "J Fuller", both styled Second Editions. Oxford and Lehmann suggest first published 1753, which Maclean treats as a separate work. ² Title page of the 1753 edition. Item #11310
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Sachgebiete: Kochbücher, Hauswirtschaft, Gastronomie
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