PROGRESSIVE COOKERY Compiled From A Series Of Lessons Given At The School of Cookery. Under The Direction of Mrs. E. M. Hinckley. Published by R. R. Patterson, San Francisco, 1890. First edition, first printing. Illustrated grey paper wraps, staple bound, 8" x 5.5", 136 pages including Index, a few bound in small addenda/errata leaves, plus 17 pages of local merchant advertisements. VERY GOOD Condition: fragile front paper cover is disbound, has small chipping to the spine margin, corner creases, some small closed edge tearing and small lines of white offsetting, perhaps from a bookcase, but overall remains bright, rear cover starting and has a pea size shoreline stain, spine covering remains solid and uncreased. Internally, just some light wear to the front margin, a touch of age, a few very light relevant notations, and offsetting from the errata leaves, otherwise tight, bright, clean and probably never used in the kitchen. Just one copy found in OCLC collections worldwide at the Texas Woman's University Library (the TWU Woman's Collection holds one of the most prestigious historical cookbook collections in the US).

San Francisco cookery, rare 1890 first printing by a pioneering Victorian woman who got lost in the vortex of history. Emily Morse Hinckley (1836-1896) well known local figure having arrived in San Francisco on the heels of the gold rush in the 1850s. A mother of three, wife of Charles E. Hinckley who owned a prominent eponymous Chemist and Apothecaries company downtown, suddenly widowed at the age of 41, she was kind of a proto 20th century west coast Martha Stewart. Emily compiled her publication from the recipes and methods she taught at her San Francisco cookery school. Her publisher R. R. Patterson was an independent printer whose press published some of the most fascinating west coast cultural and social voices of the 1890s including the works of many women. Her cookbook was a local success, it sold out and was subsequently reissued in 1892 by the San Francisco Printing Company.

Emily occupied a specific and socially precarious niche in the 1870s-1890s. She did not have many occupational choices and had to pioneer one herself. She was not Fannie Farmer nor a graduate of the Boston Cooking School and lacked the financial and academic backing that allowed those women to dictate national culinary trends. She was not a high society caterer like San Francisco's Mrs. Abby Fisher, a formerly enslaved woman who was a prize-winning culinary entrepreneur. And she did not teach charity cooking in the large network of classrooms run by the YWCA, churches and missions. Creating and running a private cooking school for middle class women was how she decided to commercialize her culinary skills to survive. Her school attracted the daughters of local merchants, lawyers, and clerks. Families that couldn't afford elite tutors, but who wanted an organized, dignified curriculum that went beyond basic cooking. There are recipes including local ingredients such as Gravenstein Apples and West Coast Flour.

Her School of Cookery operated both out of her home and commercial spaces downtown. Here are some Langley's San Francisco Directory entries: 1890 "Hinckley E. M. Mrs., New York and Boston Cooking School, 1020 Larkin"; 1895 "Hinckley Emily M., widow, teacher cooking, r. 703 Sutter." Here is a newspaper advertisement in the San Francisco Call, Volume 72, Number 145, 23 October 1892: "MRS. E. M. HINCKLEY, Teacher of Cookery, will give A SERIES OF LESSONS IN COOKING Every Wednesday Afternoon at '2 o'clock sharp. Commencing October 20, 1892, at IRVING HALL, 139 POST STREET. First lesson free. Public cordially Invited. Ladies requested to bring napkin and spoon."

Her scant wife and mother mainstream media obituary stated: "HINCKLEY-In this city, July 8, 1896, Emily M. Hinckley, widow of the late Charles Hinckley and

Mother of Charles E. Hinckley, Walter G. T. Hinckley and Herbert M. Hinckley."

She was only 59 years old.