Details

Title

The Country Kitchen

Author

Lutes, Della Thompson

Publication Date

1936

Publisher

Little, Brown, and Company

Place of Publication

Boston, MA

Physical Description

print
5 p. l., [3]-264 p. ; 20 cm.

Collection

L.M. Montgomery Institute. Ryrie-Campbell Collection

Donor

Donated by Donna Jane Campbell

Note

Della T. Lute's 'The Country Kitchen' is at once a novel and a work of autobiography; it tells the story of a young girl's life on a Michigan farm in the late nineteenth century and includes an array of family recipes woven into the text. Lutes herself was an expert in homemaking and cooking, working as editor for magazines like 'American Motherhood' and 'Modern Priscilla' before collecting various essays on her childhood into the novel, 'The Country Kitchen.' The book won the National Book Award for "Most Original Book" in 1936. Montgomery was clearly a fan of the book; when McClelland & Stewart's first Canadian edition of L.M. Montgomery's 'Jane of Lantern Hill' was published in 1937 (see Ryrie-Campbell: 551 JLH-MS 1ST), it included an enthusiastic quote from L.M. Montgomery on the dust jacket back panel praising 'The Country Kitchen.' Montgomery's promotional blurb read "A thousand thanks for sending me that delightful Book 'THE COUNTRY KITCHEN.' I haven't read anything in years that gave me so much pleasure. I seemed on every page to be living over again my own childhood in that old P.E. Island kitchen I remember so well. The book is so full of delightful humor and characters. Its people are alive. I've put it away on my 'special bookshelf' where I keep all the books I really love." (Browse the full text of the book here)

Topic

Cooking, American
Country life

Genre

novel

Call Number(s)

908 SI JLH CK

Type of Item

contemporaneous