[Rarebooks] fa: [VEGETARIANISM] RETURN TO NATURE: A DEFENCE OF THE VEGETABLE REGIMEN 1821 - John Frank Newton

[Ardwight Chamberlain]

Listed now, auctions ending Sunday, February 17. More details and images can be found at the URL below or by searching under the seller name arch_in_la.

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Thanks again,
Ardwight Chamberlain
L.A.


John Frank Newton: The Return to Nature; or, A Defence of the Vegetable Regimen. With Some Account of an Experiment Made During the Last or Four Years in the Author's Family. London: [s.n.], 1821. Softcover 8vo in recent wraps with printed label; 71 pp. (p. 499-530, 98-118, 412-429). In three parts (complete), extracted from The Pamphleteer and bound together in one volume, each part with a separate title-page.

A few light dimples to the wraps; contents quite clean and fresh, firmly bound. An early reprinting of this pivotal work in the history of vegetarianism and veganism, first published in 1811. John Frank Newton (1770-1825) was a self-styled Zoroastrian and an early proponent of a vegetable diet, having been converted to it by Dr. William Lambe, to whom the work is dedicated. Newton in turn converted Percy Bysshe Shelley in 1813, and the poet became one of the circle that gathered regularly at Newton's home to share vegetarian repasts enlivened by talk of radical politics and free love. William Godwin, Mary Shelley (née Godwin), Thomas Love Peacock, and Thomas Jefferson Hogg were also among Newton's intimates. In his Life of Percy Bysshe Shelley, Hogg describes a typical meal at the Newton manse: "Certainly their vegetable dinners were delightful; elegant and excellent repasts;… Flesh, fowl, fish, and 'game', never appeared - nor eggs, nor butter in the gross; the two latter were admitted into cookery, but as sparingly as possible, and… under protest, as culinary aids not approved of and soon to be dispensed with. The injunction extended to shell-fish… There were vegetables of every kind,… either plainly or stewed, and otherwise artfully and scientifically arranged and disguised. Puddings, tarts, confections, sweets abounded. Cheese was under the ban… Milk and cream might not be taken unreservedly; but they were allowed in puddings, and poured sparingly into tea, as an indulgence… Bread and butter and buttered toast were eschewed ; but bread cakes, plain seed-cakes, were liberally divided amongst the faithful…"