Markham-msg - 12/25/01
Gervase Markham who lived from about 1568-1637. His _The English Housewife_ was printed in 1615 and contains a treatise on farming, medicine, distillation, dyeing, etc., as well as cookery.
NOTE: See also the files: cookbooks-msg, cookbooks3-msg, cooking-bib, cookbooks-bib, cookbooks2-bib, cookbooks-SCA-msg, cb-rv-Apicius-msg, cb-novices-msg.
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From: Mark Schuldenfrei <schuldy at abel.MATH.HARVARD.EDU>
Date: Wed, 2 Jul 1997 11:26:21 -0400 (EDT)
Subject: Re: SC - Re: Markham ???
I have been lurking on this list for a couple of weeks now. (Very
informative and interesting BTW) And I keep seeing a reference to
"Markham", ie "redacted from Markham". I was wondering if someone would
be so kind as to tell me who or what Markham is.
I am glad you asked, very glad. If we cannot teach each other these things,
what good are we?
From a quick online library search by doing telnet hollis.harvard.edu,
I found the following. Harvard had 205 entries for Markham, Gervase, and
most of those were microfilm versions of MANY interesting books.... I'll
post that list in a few minutes, for interests sake.
Tibor
A Microfilmed original:
YEAR: 1653
AUTHOR: Markham, Gervase, 1568?-1637.
TITLE: The English hous-wife [microform]: containing the inward and
outward vertues which ought to be in a compleat woman ... a
work generally approved, and now the fifth time much
augmented, purged, and made most profitable and necessary
for all men and the general good of this nation.
EDITION: [5th ed.]
PUB. INFO: London: Printed by W. Wilson, for E. Brewster and George
Sawbridge .., 1653.
DESCRIPTION: [10], 188 p.: ill.
NOTES: Preface signed: Gervase Markham. Errata on prelim. p.
[10]. Imperfect: pages stained, with print show through and
loss of print. Reproduction of original in the University
of Illinois Library.
SUBJECTS: Home economics--Early works to 1800.
AUTHORS: Markham, Gervase, 1568?-1637.
LOCATION: Microforms (Lamont): Film A 147 1530:13. Microfilm. Ann
Arbor, Mich. : University Microfilms International, 1984.
1 microfilm reel ; 35 mm. (Early English books,
1641-1700 ; 1530:13) Microfilm
Modern reprint:
YEAR: 1986
AUTHOR: Markham, Gervase, 1568?-1637.
TITLE: The English housewife.
PUB. INFO: Kingston: McGill-Queen's University Press, c1986.
DESCRIPTION: lviii, 321 p.: ill.; 24 cm.
NOTES: Subtitle: Containing the inward and outward virtues which
ought to be in a complete woman, as her skill in physic,
cookery, banqueting-stuff, distillation, perfumes, wool,
hemp, flax, dairies, brewing, baking, and all other things
belonging to a household. Includes index. "The first
edition ... was published in 1615 as Book ii of Countrey
Contentments ... The present text, which uses the 1631
edition as copy-text, is the result of detailed collation of
The British Library copies of the editions of 1615 (1), 1623
(2), and 1631(3) ..--P. liv. Bibliography: p. [291]-296.
NUMBERS: ISBN 0773505822 (alk. paper)
SUBJECTS: Home economics--England--Early works to 1800. \ Medicine,
Popular- -Early works to 1800. \ Cookery, English--Early
works to 1800.
AUTHORS: Markham, Gervase, 1568?-1637. \ Best, Michael R.
From: alysk at ix.netcom.com (Elise Fleming )
Date: Wed, 2 Jul 1997 14:21:03 -0500 (CDT)
Subject: SC - PPC and Markham
Greetings! PPC (Petits Propos Culinaires) is published by Prospect
Books and is in English. If you live in the US, one year is $23.50 and
two is $45. Your check should be made payable to PPC North America and
sent to PPC North America, 45 Lamont Road, London SW10 OHU. One year
consists of three issues of a small hand-size treatise. To me it is
well worth the price, for if there is something on the Middle Ages or
Renaissance you can be sure it is documentable. A recent issue had a
brief article on Aphrodisiacs which I meant to send to this list. Ask
for it as a gift from relatives!
Markham is Gervase Markham who lived from about 1568-1637. His _The
English Housewife_ was printed in 1615 and contains a treatise on
farming, medicine, distillation, dyeing, etc., as well as cookery. A
nice edition is that of Michael R. Best, editor, published by
McGill-Queen's University Press, 1986, ISBN 0-7735-0582-2.
Alys Katharine
Date: Fri, 11 Jun 1999 22:47:44 -0400
From: Philip & Susan Troy <troy at asan.com>
Subject: Re: SC - Faire Food--the Menus (long)
david friedman wrote:
> I raise the point because several of your recipes are from Markham, whose
> book was published, as best I recall, in the second half of the seventeenth
> century.
Markham's "The English Hus-Wife" was published in 1615, and was the
subject of a successful plagiarism suit from another publisher. The
question wasn't whether Markham lifted material from other authors
(although he seems to have done so, one being Villanova) but whether
Markham could keep recycling his own previous works under new titles and
earn additional money for other publishers and himself. This would
indicate that while all of the material from TEH is from prior to 1615,
some of it may be from well before that, and very possibly before 1601.
Of course, there's the question of the SCA-specific-value of things
taught by the works that might have been period, versus the ones that
clearly are, but we don't necessarily need to get into that here and now.
Markham is, though, rather closer to the tail end of "period", both in
chronology and in style, than, say, Digby.
Adamantius
Date: Wed, 19 Dec 2001 17:05:09 -0500
From: Philip & Susan Troy <troy at asan.com>
To: sca-cooks at ansteorra.org
Subject: Re: [Sca-cooks] Re: rice pudding & marrow
Kirrily Robert wrote:
> The English Housewife is webbed at http://infotrope.net/sca/cooking/ if
> anyone wants any more from this source. Lots of good recipes, though
> slightly out of period (1615). However, the just-pre-1600 cookbooks
> I've been working with lately don't read much differently, and I don't
> think an awful lot changed in those 20 years. I'm intending to make the
> abovementioned rice pudding for an upcoming dinner party and/or potluck.
It should be noted that Markham appears as the defendant in one of England's earliest plagiarism trials, as a legal structure had not really yet been devised to prevent a publisher from buying a book in a bookstall, tacking "New" onto its title, and publishing more or less the exact same book. (Yes. Not unlike what Bill Gates does ;-) ) In Markham's case, what he was being accused of was apparently recycling his own work for republication, and being paid for it as if it were original material. My point is that I'm not exactly sure when Markham actually wrote some or all of the text that was _published_ in 1615, which might explain the fact that it doesn't read all that differently from recipes published in, say, the 1580's or '90's.
Adamantius
Date: Wed, 19 Dec 2001 17:59:30 -0500
From: johnna holloway <johnna at sitka.engin.umich.edu>
To: sca-cooks at ansteorra.org
Subject: [Sca-cooks] Markham Bibliography was rice pudding & marrow
There have been enough questions regarding
what Gervase Markham wrote or translated or
published that in 1962 F.N.L. [Frederick No=EBl
Lawrence] Poynter published
A Bibliography of Gervase Markham, 1568?-1637.
[Oxford Bibliographical Society Publications, new
series, vol. xi, 1962 a work of 218 pages by the way]
as an attempt to make sense
of what consisted of his body of works. This is as
far as I know the only bibliography of an early
English cookery author that is dedicated to just one author.
Regarding his troubles with the Stationer's, what Markham
was attempting to do by reissuing his material was to
recoup monies for works that were previously sold to a printer
and published. The author was paid once and only once, but
the printer/publisher could reissue the work as needed
without further payment to the original author.
Markham, needing money, was selling
basicly the same work on husbandry to a number of printers
over time. They were each releasing editions that were
then in direct competition with each
other. The Stationer's Company of course didn't like this, so
they forced him to quit. Michael Best explores part of this, as
does The Cambridge History of English and American Literature
at http://www.bartleby.com/214/1701.html#txt2 .
Johnna Holloway Johnnae llyn Lewis
<the end>