Alice B. Toklas

First UK edition of Toklas's memoir in cookbook form of her life with Gertrude Stein, written in Paris during the author's three-month convalescence to recall old dishes and days "hovering dream-like in invalid memory."

• Alice B. Toklas (American).
• Illustrated by Sir Francis Rose (English).
• London: Michael Joseph, (1954).
• 288 pages.
• Typed note on BBC letterhead laid in: "18th January 1955 / With Miss Kallin's Compliments."
• Bound in original pale orange cloth. Pale green topstain, pictorial endpapers, in original unclipped (21s.) pictorial dust jacket.

Alice B. Toklas's speaking voice was described by poet James Merrill as like "a viola at dusk," and her writing voice was similarly appealing: smooth, humorous, engaging, studded with little sharp points like tacks in a plush carpet. "It is certainly a mistake to allow a reputation for cleverness to be born," she says; people think nothing of asking great feats from you, and all "to be accomplished before Gertrude Stein returned for she didn't like to see work being done." Laid in to this copy is a typed presentation note from Anna Kallin, onetime mistress of Oskar Kokoschka and influential BBC producer of Isaiah Berlin, Mary Midgley, Julian Huxley and others. Janet Malcolm, Two Lives: Gertrude and Alice.