Rawlings, Marjorie Kinnan (1896 -1953)

Cross Creek Cookery [Southern Regional Cooking, Florida Foodways, Literary Cookbook, Signed]

New York: Charles Scribner's Sons, 1942. Illustrated by Robert Camp. First Edition, First Printing. Hardcover with Dust Jacket.
‘Not Just A Cookbook, But A Way Of Life At The Florida Table.’

A signed first edition of Marjorie Kinnan Rawlings’ Cross Creek Cookery, issued the same year as publication and retaining the original priced dust jacket.

Conceived at the insistence of readers who longed to taste the meals evoked in Cross Creek, this volume blends more than 250 recipes with reflective essays and anecdotal sketches of rural Florida life. Rawlings’ voice remains literary rather than instructional, with food serving as a lens for memory, place, labor, and community. Signed by Rawlings on the title page, this is a desirable association copy of one of the most influential Southern cookbooks of the twentieth century.

Physical Description:  Octavo, 230 pages, including index. Original pictorial calico-textured cloth boards with illustrated endpapers. Illustrated throughout with drawings by Robert Camp. Printed on cream stock. Original dust jacket, front flap priced $2.50. Scribner’s colophon present with “A” on the copyright page, confirming first printing.

Condition: The bindings are tight and square. Text is clean; light, even age-toning. Minimal shelf handling wear. Dust jacket shows light edge wear and gentle age toning, retaining strong color and legibility, price intact. Signed by the author on the title page. First Edition, First Printing.

Scarcity Note: Signed first editions of Cross Creek Cookery are substantially scarcer than unsigned copies, particularly with the original $2.50 priced dust jacket present. Many surviving examples are unsigned or lack the jacket.

Unlike conventional cookbooks, Cross Creek Cookery reads as a companion volume to Rawlings’ celebrated memoir. Recipes unfold alongside vignettes of neighbors, weather, hunting, hospitality, and improvisation in an isolated Florida hamlet.

The book is as attentive to storytelling as it is to technique, and its culinary authority rests largely in the lived knowledge of Idella Parker, Rawlings’ long-time cook and collaborator, whose influence shapes much of the book’s practical wisdom. The result is a hybrid work, part regional ethnography, part literary memoir, part kitchen manual.

Contextual / Historical Significance
Published during World War II, the book reflects a resourceful, place-based Southern food tradition at a moment when American domestic life was under pressure and change. It helped define Southern regional cooking for a national audience and stands alongside works such as Joy of Cooking as a foundational American culinary text. There is no major film adaptation of this work.

Subjects: Florida Foodways, Southern Cooking, Literary Cookbooks, Women Writers, Rural American Life, American Culinary History, American Food Writing, Southern Literature, Regional Cookbooks.

Bibliographic References
Tarr A 5.I.a.
Bigelow, American Cookbooks, no. 46
Edwards, Culinary Americana, no. 166

Item #21422

Price: $650.00