Stalking the Wild Asparagus [Dam Mayers copy] by Gibbons, Euell - 1967

New York: David McKay Company, Inc, 1967. Sixth printing. Illustrated with simple line drawings, octavo, pp xii, 303, top and fore-edge foxed, otherwise very clean internally, green cloth, the spine slightly faded. From the library of Dan E. Mayers, plantsman, chess-master, limerick-lover and eccentric, with bookplate showing his Arts & Crafts house "Lorien" in Wadhurst. [Euell Theophilus Gibbons, 1911 - 1975, was an outdoorsman and early health food advocate, promoting eating wild foods during the 1960s. At the request of a New York literary agent, Gibbons agreed to rework the draft of his novel (about a schoolteacher who wowed café society with opulent meals of foraged foodstuffs) into a straightforward book on wild food. Capitalizing on the growing return-to-nature movement in 1962, the resulting work, Stalking the Wild Asparagus, was an instant success. Gibbons followed it up with the cookbooks Stalking the Blue-Eyed Scallop in 1964 and Stalking the Healthful Herbs in 1966. He was widely published in various magazines, including two pieces in National Geographic. Often mistaken for a survivalist, Gibbons was simply an advocate of nutritious but neglected plants, which he typically prepared not in the wild, but in the kitchen with abundant use of spices, butter and garnishes. Several of his books discuss what he called "wild parties" - dinner parties where guests were served dishes prepared from plants gathered in the wild. His favourite recommendations included lamb's quarters, rose hips, young dandelion shoots, stinging nettle and cattails. He often pointed out that gardeners threw away the tastier, more healthful crop when they removed such "weeds" as purslane and amaranth from among their spinach plants.]. Cloth. Good.