An Alphabet for Gourmets

First issued in 1949, this is a set of twenty-six essays by M.F.K. Fisher, one for each letter, on eating as a social and private act. The pieces treat dining alone, bachelors, caution, gluttony, and other headings from A to Z, mixing remembered meals in France and America with remarks on hunger, manners, and the company at table. Recipes appear, but the book is not a cookery manual. It is a sequence of food essays: short, first-person inquiries into how people behave when they cook, serve, and sit down to eat, and into the feelings that attend a meal.

Quarter bound in green cloth with paper sides printed with a colour design by the artist. Dark green endpapers. Dark green slipcase.