Using part of the $6000.00 legacy she had received following her husband's death, Rombauer paid the Clayton Printing Company to publish her cookbook, which she marketed herself, selling copies for $3.00 apiece, and managing to sell approximately 2000 copies in two years, no mean accomplishment in the early years of the Great Depression.

Louis to which the Rombauers belonged, including the elite Wednesday Club, of which she eventually became president. As she wrote in her introduction to The Joy of Cooking, 'Will it encourage you to know that I was once as ignorant, helpless and awkward a bride as was ever foisted on an impecunious young lawyer? Together we placed many a burnt offering upon the altar of matrimony.' After her husband committed suicide following decades of intermittent depression in 1930, Rombauer needed to find a means of support and decided to publish a book of the recipes that she had perfected as a homemaker, as the teacher of a cooking class for the Women's Alliance at a midwestern church that she had started in 1922, and as hostess to numerous civic and cultural organizations in St. Louis doctor, studied art at Washington University, and enjoyed a brief romance with the writer Booth Tarkington before marrying Edgar Rombauer, a lawyer, in 1899.

Irma von Starkloff Rombauer, the daughter of Max von Starkloff, an affluent St. This was privately published by the author in an edition of 3000 copies, and illustrated by the author's daughter, Marion Rombauer Becker. The first few pages are lightly tanned and the rest have occasional spotting.The binding has been strengthened.Cookbooks take a beating and this has survived over 90 years! This is a very special cookbook for any chef's kitchen and one of a few left. Blue boards with gilt title on front,395 pages with the words-'the cover of this book can be cleaned with a moist cloth' on the back pastedown. The book is in good condition(spotting and age wear) being 85 years old and self published during the depression with minimalist intent. It is signed 'Cordially Yours Irma Rombauer'.This was Irma Rombauer's first self publishing containing the recipes that made her a legend in the kitchen. Very very few books have survived of this small initial 1931 printing. This is the very rare 1931 first printing of cook's bible 'The Joy of Cooking'.

The Joy of Cooking by Irma S. Rombauer