This collection purchased from Justin Croft Antiquarian Books in January 2017 and held at McGill University’s Rare Books and Special Collections consists of fifteen books, ten notebooks and approximately 300 loose documents, containing over 1,600 culinary, medical and household handwritten recipes, all of which is now searchable using OCR and Handwritten Text Recognition. These documents originated chiefly from the Doncaster area of South Yorkshire, centred on Hooten Pagnell Hall, and date from roughly the 1780s through the 1850s. The bound volumes include two printed works by female authors, while many of the manuscripts and notes are signed by or addressed to Sarah Anne Warde. Two of these notebooks are attributed to Sarah Anne Warde, and another to Eliza Smithson. Learn more about Smithson’s table setting riddles -- also known as an enigmatical bill of fare -- in The Riddle Project.

Rare Books and Special Collections houses a significant amount of archival material relating to the commercial fur trade of the 18th and 19th centuries. These collections include material documenting the finance, accounting, and administration of the North West Company, as well as the kinship networks that solidified wealth and political power amongst its senior management and major shareholders.  

The papers include material relating to James McGill, McGill University’s original benefactor, and members of his social circle, including Simon McTavish, for whom McTavish Street, which runs through the centre of the University’s downtown campus, is named, as well as other members of the Beaver Club, an elite dining club created by North West Company shareholders in Montreal.