The Mary Frances Cook Book: Or Adventures Among the Kitchen People by Jane Eayre Fryer (1876 --?) - 1912

iv+175 pages with illustrations and frontispiece. Royal octavo (9 1/2" x 6 3/4") issued in original blue cloth with pictorial front board and gilt lettering to spine. Full page illustrations by Margaret G Hays, other illustrations by Jane Allen Boyer. 1st edition. Jane Eayre Fryer, daughter of Isabella Van de Veer and Mortimer Haines Eayre, was born in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania in 1876. After graduating from Northfield Seminary, Massachusetts in 1896, where she specialized in domestic art and science, she taught Latin and English at the Mt. Holly Military Academy in New Jersey (1897-98) and supervised the domestic art and science program at the Jacob Tome Institute in Port Deposit, Maryland (1899 - 1902). In January of 1902 she married John Gayton Fryer of Providence, Rhode Island. Ten years later, in 1912, she published the first in a series of juvenile books designed to teach young girls fundamental domestic skills. Entitled The Mary Frances Cook Book. Adventures Among the Kitchen People, the simple cook book is couched in a whimsical narrative about young Mary Frances' attempts to please the grown-ups as well as the "kitchen people," animated culinary tools who help her follow the basic recipes her mother wrote down for her. "Some very wise people will call this a story book," the author writes in the beginning, " some a manual training book, and others a cookery book, but Mary Frances knows better; she knows that it is a Book within a Book that introduced her to Aunty Rolling Pin and a lot of other dear, dear friends . . ." The inspired illustrations by Margaret Hays and Jane Allen Boyer are entertaining for readers of all ages. Other books in the series include The Mary Frances Sewing Book (1913); The Mary Frances Housekeeper (1914); The Mary Frances Garden Book (1915); The Mary Frances First Aid Book (1916); and The Mary Frances Knitting and Crocheting Book (1918). Fryer's other books include Young American Civic Readers (1918-1919); The Mary Frances Story Book (1921); Mrs. Fryer's Loose Leaf Cook Book (1923) and The Bible Story Book for Boys and Girls (1924). Fryer made her home in Merchantville, N.J. Condition: Shaken, corners bumped and rubbed, spine ends rubbed and frayed, book plate on front paste down, front inner hinge cracked, front free end paper lacking else a good copy.. First Edition. Original Cloth. Good. Royal octavo.