The Bon Vivant's Companion...or...How to Mix Drinks (Signed by Asbury)
New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 1928. Limited Edition, #119 of 160 copies. Black and white illustrations. Hardcover. Tall octavo. liv, 169 pages. Bound in patterned paper over boards with brown cloth spine, gilt-stamped spine titles, and a gilt-stamped goblet at center of upper board. Integral silk ribbon bookmark, all edges rough cut. Rubs, bumps, surface scratches to binding. There is even a bit of staining to upper board, perhaps from a mixology session. Prior owner presentation inscription on front pastedown dated 1928. Mild foxing to endpapers, with some splits to same along inner margins. Hinges remain sound. Occasional spots of foxing to text, with general mild age toning. A good+ copy.
Special limited edition of the first drink guide published in the United States. Legendary bartender Jerry Thomas originally published his bartenders' companion in 1862. This edition includes an Introduction by Herbert Asbury, who has also signed and numbered this copy on the limitation page. One of only 160 copies (150 of which were offered for sale).
Features a wide variety of drink recipes, from punches and juleps to cocktails and flips, along with instructions on bartending tools and techniques. Thomas updated the book during his lifetime, adding new concoctions as he learned or created them. Illustrated throughout with woodcuts taken from various illustrated newspapers from 1860 to 1880. Frontispiece illustration shows Thomas preparing his signature drink, the Blue Blazer.
It is interesting that this edition was published at the height of Prohibition in the United States, a fact which Asbury addresses in his Introduction: "In these decayed and evangelical times, when drinking has reverted to a savage guzzling of liquid dynamite, the name of Jerry Thomas arouses no answering spark of manhood from the craven victims of bootleg liquor or the cowed and beaten slaves who labor in the gloomy galleys of the Anti-Saloon League. But to the ancients who weep beside the bier of a lost art it brings back beautiful memories of golden fizzes and stimulating juleps, of cobblers, slings and sangarees. For Jerry Thomas was the greatest drink mixer of his age; his praises were sung by enlightened and Christian men from the Gulf of Mexico to the barren coast of Maine, and from the Golden Gate to Broadway."
This copy seems to have been used as Jerry Thomas would have intended. In addition to the wear to the exterior, and its evocative liquid stain, there are pencil notes in margins and at least one additional recipe clipped from another source taped in.
Ref. NOLING p. 403.
Item #1846
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