The French invented the restaurant in the late eighteenth century. Not long after, they invented gastronomy, the modern art of eating well: English society discovered the French chef and the English-speaking world has never been the same. This delicious anthology brings together the major English and French nineteenth-century writings on the arts and pleasures of the table. Included are essays by Grimod de la Reynière, Brillat-Savarin, Alexandre Dumas, Charles Lamb, William Thackeray and lesser-known works by pseudonymous authors such as Launcelot Sturgeon and Dick Humelbergius Secundus.

The French invented the restaurant in the late eighteenth century. Not long after, they invented gastronomy, the modern art of eating well: English society discovered the French chef and the English-speaking world has never been the same. This delicious anthology brings together the major English and French nineteenth-century writings on the arts and pleasures of the table. Included are essays by Grimod de la Reynière, Brillat-Savarin, Alexandre Dumas, Charles Lamb, William Thackeray and lesser-known works by pseudonymous authors such as Launcelot Sturgeon and Dick Humelbergius Secundus.