Doncaster

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.