How to Mix Drinks, Or the Bon-Vivant’s Companion
New York: Dick & Fitzgerald, (1862)
First Edition, Later State — In the Original Cloth
 
The Birth of the American Cocktail
In 1862, at the height of New York’s gilded hotel culture, Jerry Thomas—bartender, showman, and later the dedicatee of The Savoy Cocktail Book—published a volume that would forever alter the landscape of American drinking. How to Mix Drinks stands as the first true cocktail book issued in the United States, a landmark that transformed an oral, improvisational craft into a codified art.
Within these pages Thomas gathered more than five hundred recipes, including his signature spectacle, the Blue Blazer—a blazing arc of ignited whiskey passed between two tumblers, equal parts chemistry and theater. Before this book, the American cocktail existed in fragments; after it, the profession had a canon.
 
A Scarce Survival in Original Cloth
Octavo (7½ × 5¼ inches). 244 pages plus [8] pages of publisher’s advertisements. Illustrated throughout with in‑text wood engravings, including a diagram of a still. Bound in the publisher’s original brown cloth, the spine gilt‑lettered and bearing the tiny $2.50 price—an identifying point of the later state of the first edition.
The publisher issued approximately 8,000 copies of the first edition, initially titled The Bar-Tender’s Guide; first priced at $1.50, then $2.00, then $2.50. later copies, such as this one, appeared under the How to Mix Drinks title. Surviving examples in original cloth are notably scarce, and increasingly prized.
 
Condition
A well-preserved and appealing example:
Light edgewear; corners bumped and rubbed; spine tips softened; mild sunning and a few small spots to the cloth. Text gently toned with occasional finger smudges. Binding tight and sound. Overall, very good, an outstanding example, far cleaner than typically encountered.
 
Significance
Thomas presents 236 “social drinks”—those apart from water, breakfast beverages, and tea—followed by Christian Schultz’s extensive manual on cordials, liqueurs, and syrups. Together they form the earliest comprehensive record of American mixology. Thomas is now widely regarded as the father of the American cocktail, and his first edition has become a cornerstone of culinary and cultural collecting.
 
References
Cagle & Stafford 743. Simon 1461.