The Goodman of Paris (Le Ménagier De Paris)

Written in the 1390s by an anonymous wealthy Parisian for his much younger wife, this household book instructs her in piety, obedience, and the running of a bourgeois home. It covers confession and mass, the management of servants, shopping, gardening, horses and hawks, and a long run of recipes and menus for the urban table. Moral tales, including a version of patient Griselda, are offered as models of wifely conduct. The voice is practical and proprietary. The work is a medieval manual of domestic economy and morals, not a novel and not a royal courtesy book.

Bound in green cloth, colour printed cover-label. Pale green endleaves. Pale brown slipcase.