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Verkäuferbewertung
Verlag: London: printed for D. Midwinter, 1725, 1725
Anbieter: Peter Harrington. ABA/ ILAB., London, Vereinigtes Königreich
Erstausgabe
First edition in English of Chomel's miscellany of household advice which was first published in French in 1709. The present translation was drawn from the second French edition of 1718 and includes numerous expansions and revisions by Bradley. Works of oeconomy were concerned with the proper management of the household and were significant in the development of chemical experimentation, particularly in the kitchen. Dictionaire Oeconomique contains advice on numerous topics, such as cleaning, cooking, maintenance, medicine, health, gardening, husbandry, agriculture, and management of family and servants. In his revisions, Bradley (1688-1732) applied a distinctive English style to Chomel's (1633-1712) instructions for French households by including advice on husbandry and agriculture drawn from English authors such as Gervase Markham (1568-1637), John Evelyn (1620-1706), and Hugh Platt (1552-1608): "As far as I can judge, I have well supply'd the place of those paragraphs, which, by reason of their inconsistency with our Religion or oeconomy have not inserted from the French Author" (preface). The practice of oeconomy was often concerned with demonstrating the diverse uses of materials and encouraging the repurposing of waste. "Oeconomic concerns, shared among family members, sought to balance the consumption and use of new goods with the careful stewardship of the old, maintaining and making good use of existing possessions where possible. This led to savings of money and time, but beyond narrow conceptions of profit and loss, it established good order and provided a model for the management of other arenas of life. Applied to chemistry, oeconomics regulated a diverse body of spaces and materials that were the location of much experimentation" (Werrett, p. 55). Works of oeconomy, with their detailed recipes and emphasis on innovation, were a breeding ground for early chemical investigation, much of which took place in people's homes; this work contains lengthy descriptions on the art of distillation with instructions for constructing furnaces and instruments such as crucibles and alembics. The kitchen doubled as a chemical laboratory, where food and drink were prepared alongside medicines, soaps, and dyes. Richard Bradley was a naturalist and botanist whose New Improvements of Planting (1717) gives the earliest known record of artificial crossfertilization. Patronized by Sir Hans Sloane, he was a Fellow of the Royal Society and the first professor of botany at Cambridge. Chomel (1633-1712) was a priest and agronomist. His agricultural and botanical interests stemmed from his work managing the woodlands and vegetable gardens of the Château d'Avron alongside Jean-Baptiste de la Quintinie (1626-1688), gardener of Louis XIV and creator of the vegetable garden at Versailles. Simon Werrett, "Household Oeconomy and Chemical Inquiry", in Lissa L. Roberts & Simon Werrett, eds., Compound Histories, 2018. Two volumes, folio in fours (331 x 193 mm). Contemporary panelled calf, spines with six raised bands, compartments lettered and decorated in gilt, brown morocco labels, red sprinkled edges. Title pages printed in red and black, numerous woodcut vignettes and diagrams within text. Pencil ownership initials of G. B. on title pages. Spine ends and corners slightly worn, joints split at ends but firm, small chip at head of front joint of vol. I, stripping to calf with a few marks, gilt tooling faded, damp stain to lower outer corner of first 3 leaves of vol. I, very occasional tiny burn marks: a very good copy.