Full leather bound in brown calf with gold tooling.

A cookery book written by Agnes Jekyll for Queen Mary’s Doll’s House.

Lady Jekyll was a famous society hostess and philanthropist.  The year before she donated this book to the Doll’s House, she began writing witty, anonymous articles on food and cooking for The Times, later published under the title ‘Kitchen Essays, with recipes and their occasions’. The miniature volume includes a section on ‘the Royal Cook' who 'being an artist, knows well how to prepare faultlessly & serve to perfection every dish…’

Lady Jekyll was godmother to Mary Lutyens, daughter of Doll’s House architect, Edwin, who may have suggested she contribute this volume of her recipes to the miniature library.

Queen Mary’s Dolls’ House was a gift to Queen Mary from the nation; a showcase for contemporary craft and design, it preserved for history the ideal home of the 1920s, at a scale of one foot to one inch. Princess Marie Louise, Queen Victoria’s granddaughter, conceived the idea, and through her influence many famous artists, designers, authors and craftsmen contributed to the project.
The dolls’ house library contains, alongside standard works such as four tiny Bibles, miniature atlases and a complete works of Shakespeare, over 200 diminutive editions of contemporary British literature. Princess Marie Louise personally wrote to the most famous writers of the time to ask for either an original composition or a suitable passage from work already published, transcribed by hand or submitted for professional copying. Though most are manuscript, there are a few printed works. The bindings are mostly morocco leather or vellum, some with beautifully precise gold-tooled decoration. The majority of the volumes were bound by Sangorski & Sutcliffe, with the remaining bound by Birdsall & Son, Hatchards, A. Loosely, R. Riviere & Sons and Zaehnsdorf. Each book contains a tiny bookplate designed by E.H. Shepard, the illustrator of Winnie the Pooh.