a publisher and being rejected many times, the Bobbs-Merrill Company published an expanded (640 page) second edition on May 1, 1936. The company had limited experience with publishing cookbooks, and Irma Rombauer, similarly inexperienced in dealing with publishers, performed the negotiations herself without an agent or lawyer. The resulting contract, in which Bobbs-Merrill was granted the copyright not only for the 1936 edition but also for the original 1931 version, resulted in many years of conflict between the author and the publisher. The 1936 edition differed from other commercial cookbooks of the era by its retention of the author's folksy comments and anecdotes, and its layout of the recipes. Instead of listing the ingredients for a dish at the top with preparation directions following, the recipes in Joy (1936) were presented by narratives, with the ingredients indicated as the need for them occurred, with each placed in boldface on a new indented line — thus preserving a conversational style throughout the recipe. This method came to be known as the "action method". These innovations, along with an aggressive marketing effort by Bobbs-Merrill, resulted in good sales. Joy reached the best-seller list in St. Louis and promoted as "the famous private cookbook" in the New York Times. By the end of 1942, the second edition had had six printings, and 52,151 copies had been sold. Third edition (1943/1946) In 1939, Rombauer published Streamlined Cooking, a collection of recipes that could be prepared in less than 30 minutes, with an emphasis on use of canned and frozen foods. This book was not a commercial success, but many of the recipes it contained became part of a new edition of Joy of Cooking published during 1943. This edition also included material intended to help readers deal with wartime rationing restrictions, including alternatives to butter in some recipes. Sales of this edition were phenomenal: from 1943 through 1946 a total of 617,782 copies were sold, surpassing sales of Joy of Cooking's principal competitor, Fannie Farmer's Boston Cooking-School Cook Book. During 1946, a minor revision of the 1943 edition was published. While substantially the same as its predecessor, the 1946 revision omitted the material related to wartime rationing and incorporated additional recipes from Streamlined Cooking. Fourth edition (1951) Irma Rombauer was 69 years old when the 1946 edition of Joy was published, and her health was beginning to decline. She was concerned about the future