Fairfax (Arabella) The Family’s Best Friend: or the Whole Art of Cookery made Plain and Easy, fifth [earliest recorded] edition, pagination erratic (as per other copies), woodcut head-pieces and a decorative initial, lacking G4&5 and H2&3, A3 lower corner torn with some loss of text, a few short tears (that on G6 causing loss of a single letter recto and verso, without loss of sense), some spotting or light staining, lightly browned, later endpapers (the front free lacking), 19th century calf, spine gilt and with black leather label, rubbed, [Maclean, pp. 47-8; Oxford, p. 85; Simon, BG 651 (note)], large 12mo, Printed for the Author, 1753.

⁂ Rare at auction (the last copy we can trace being in 1954 (Arthur Shircliffe sale, sold Parke-Bernet, 9&10th November, 1954, first mentioned of lot 271)), and scarce institutionally, with copies often being found defective. This is the earliest edition of the work recorded by the bibliographers. Maclean believed it to be 'Either a slightly earlier edition of a book by Penelope Bradshaw using a pseudonym, or, more likely, a pirated version of it.’ (the latter may account for the erratic pagination).