 It was published privately during 1931 by Irma S. Rombauer (1877-1962), a homemaker in St. Louis, Missouri, after her husband's suicide the previous year.Rombauer had 3,000 copies printed by A.C. Clayton, a company which had printed labels for fancy St. Louis shoe companies and for Listerine mouthwash, but never a book.Beginning in 1936, the book was published by a commercial printing house, the Bobbs-Merrill Company.