Suffrage Cookbook, The.
[Cookbooks]. Kleber, I.O., compiler. The Suffrage Cookbook. Pittsburgh: The Equal Franchise Federation of Western Pennsylvania, 1915.
8vo.; illustrated throughout; bright blue cloth decorated with the silhouette of Uncle Sam weighing a man opposite a woman on a balance; minor stain on the lower panel; extremities lightly rubbed, else a beautiful copy.
First edition of an uncommon suffrage relic; including portraits of, and excerpts by, influential suffragettes, feminists, and sympathizers, such as Jane Addams, Charlotte Perkins Gilman, Fanny Garrison Villard, Carrie Chapman Catt, and Julia Lathrop. Intended as a dependable guide for staving off malady and for promoting “sane living,” Kleber’s compilation contains wholesome, unpretentious recipes that aim to develop a community of hale men and women, and “thus to insure the best possible social and political conditions for the people of this country.”
The impassioned introduction, written by Ersmus Wilson, further explains that:
The cook book of the past was filled mainly with recipes for dainties rather than sane and wholesome dishes…Now that we are entering upon an age of sane living it is important that the home makers should be impressed with the fact that good health precedes all that is worth while in life, and that it starts in the kitchen; that the dining room is a greater social factor than the drawing room.
In the broader view of the social world that is dawning upon us, the cook book that tells us how to live right and well will largely supplant Shakespeare, Browning, and the lurid literature of the day.
Kleber’s cookbook is a fine example of the many cookbooks and culinary tractates, written during the Suffrage movement, that encouraged a radical shift from traditional delicate victuals to wholesome, pragmatic, and often medicinal, meals.
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