Product Description: Whether the subject of her fancy is the lowly, unassuming potato or the love life of that aphrodisiac mollusk the oyster, Mary Frances Kennedy Fisher writes with a simplicity that belies the complexities of the life she often muses on...read more

Product Description: For MFK Fisher, one of America's most-read and best-loved food writers, wine was a passion nurtured during her time in France and, later, California. This anthology, edited by acclaimed biographer Anne Zimmerman (An Extravagant Hunger: The Passionate Years of M...read more

Product Description: Whether the subject of her fancy is the lowly, unassuming potato or the love life of that aphrodisiac mollusk the oyster, Mary Frances Kennedy Fisher writes with a simplicity that belies the complexities of the life she often muses on...read more

Product Description: Any discussion of the great masters of American English must include the writings of Mary Frances Kennedy Fisher. For more than sixty years, in her writings about family, food, and travel, Fisher amassed a body of work that belongs on any shelf of classic American writing...read more

The Physiology of Taste or Transcendental Gastronomy by Jean Anthelme Brillat-Savarin Translated from the last Paris edition by Fayette Robinson. Jean Anthelme Brillat-Savarin; 1 April 1755, Belley, Ain – 2 February 1826, Paris, was a French lawyer and politician, and gained fame as an epicure and gastronome: "Grimod and Brillat-Savarin. Between them, two writers effectively founded the whole genre of the gastronomic essay." His famous work, Physiologie du goût (The Physiology of Taste), was published in December 1825, two months before his death. The full title is Physiologie du Goût, ou Méditations de Gastronomie Transcendante; ouvrage théorique, historique et à l'ordre du jour, dédié aux Gastronomes parisiens, par un Professeur, membre de plusieurs sociétés littéraires et savantes. The book has not been out of print since it first appeared, shortly before Brillat-Savarin's death. Its most notable English translation was done by food writer and critic M. F. K. Fisher, who remarked "I hold myself blessed among translators." Her translation was first published in 1949. The body of his work, though often wordy or excessively - and sometimes dubiously - aphoristic and axiomatic, has remained extremely important and has repeatedly been re-analyzed through the years since his death. In a series of meditations that owe something to Montaigne's Essays, and have the discursive rhythm of an age of leisured reading and a confident pursuit of educated pleasures, Brillat-Savarin discourses on the pleasures of the table, which he considers a science. His French models were the stylists of the Ancien Régime: Voltaire, Rousseau, Fénelon, Buffon, Cochin and d'Aguesseau.

Published in 1825 after some three decades of consuming research, The Physiology of Taste is the most famous book ever written about food. It remains among the most comprehensive, stimulating, and just plain enjoyable works ever published on the subject of the senses and their pleasures. In a work spiced with style and wisdom, Brillat-Savarin declares that "Animals feed themselves; men eat; but only wise men know the art of eating." M.F.K. Fisher's translation of Brillat-Savarin's masterpiece, originally published in 1825, is a true marriage of minds and sensibilities, a classic against which all subsequent gastronomical writing must be measured. Published in 1825 after some three decades of consuming research, The Physiology of Taste is the most famous book ever written about food. Witty and elegant, it is a classic in the grandest sense. Brillat-Savarin set out to write about food and cookery, but his interests and enthusiasms ranged so widely over matters of the human spirit that they could hardly be contained, and his work-here in its greatest translation-sits on the shelf of masterpieces of world literature. Its treasures include: observations on feasting and fasting and on the advantages of gourmandism, including its influence on marital happiness discourses on obesity and its cure and on the calamity of thinness, particularly in women, with prescriptions for fattening them up Brillat-Savarin's twenty famous aphorisms, including, "Tell me what you eat, and I shall tell you what you are." A work spiced with style and wisdom, The Physiology of Taste remains among the most comprehensive, stimulating, and enjoyable works ever published on the subject of the senses and their pleasures. Epicureans by vocation and avocation will want this beautiful hardcover edition for their reference shelves. This elegant and witty book is a classic in the grandest sense. Brillat-Savarin set out to write about food and cookery, but his interests and enthusiasms ranged so widely over matters of the human spirit that they could hardly be contained, and his work-here in its greatest translation-sits on the shelf of masterpieces of world literature. As translator, M.F.K. Fisher proved to be Brillat-Savarin's twentieth-century spiritual companion. Her lively footnotes and commentaries constitute nearly a quarter of the text, a seductive dialogue of romance between two great lovers of life and style. Its treasures include: observations on feasting and fasting and on the advantages of gourmandism, including its influence on marital happiness analysis and definition of the senses, with a gastronomical test to measure the degree of one's gift for taste discourses on obesity and its cure and on the calamity of thinness, particularly in women, with prescriptions for fattening them up talk of truffles and their possible erotic effect, of coffee and its stimulative powers, of chocolate, and omelets, and eels Brillat-Savarin's twenty famous aphorisms, including, "Tell me what you eat, and I shall tell you what you are." a philosophic survey of the history of cooking anecdotes of unforgettable meals and the stratagems by which they were obtained, elaborate practical jokes, and culinary challenges met and surmounted.

Product Description: Like the savory, simple dishes she favored, M. F. K. Fisher's writing was often “short, stylish, concentrated in flavor, and varied in form,” writes Joan Reardon in her introduction to this eclectic, lively collection. Magazine writing launched and helped to sustain Fisher's long, illustrious career and in these fifty-seven pieces we experience again the inimitable voice of the woman widely known to have elevated food writing to a literary art...read more

An upbeat collection of fifty-seven stories and essays celebrates the esteemed food writer's five-decade career and includes rare contributions to lesser-known and ephemeral magazines, as well as pieces previously published in such periodicals as Gourmet, Bon Appetit, and Harper's Bazaar.

In this poetic, sensitive memoir, M. F. K. Fisher traces her life from birth through childhood into adulthood through memories of her loving family and their lives as outsiders in the Quaker community of Whittier, California. Recalling the people, passions, sounds, and scents of her childhood, with its kindnesses and quiet cruelties, Fisher also portrays her developing interests in literature, food, and cooking. Elegantly and invitingly written, Among Friends demonstrates the writer’s belief that “every lesson, every lecture listened to, must be interpreted into a personal dialect of human language, and that is what I keep trying to do.

Describes traditional remedies and folk medicines which have been prepared from Shakespeare's time to the present

A commemorative keepsake edition of the food writing classic is a compilation of many of the author's best writings and features an introductory tribute by Fisher's leading biographer and quotes from some of today's top culinary names. Original.

Product Description: The woman who elevated food writing to an art is at her best in this mouthwatering collection of memoirs and recipes. Boldly confessing her prejudices and her passions, M.F.K Fisher includes more than 140 recipes in the 17 chapters of this book...read more

In this collection of essays the noted writer conjures up pleasures--and pangs--of sight, sound, and taste, in California, in France, and at sea, and evokes a world that is splendidly colored, keenly felt, and richly personal

Product Description: "M.F.K. Fisher is to literary prose," wrote the Chicago Sun-Times, "what Laurence Olivier is to acting."  From the Journals of M.F.K. Fisher combines into one volume three acclaimed collections of journals, correspondence, and short stories, the earliest piece written when Fisher was nineteen and the last composed shortly before her death in 1992, at age eighty-three...read more (view table of contents, read Amazon.com's description)

Product Description: Gathering journals, letters, translations, and selections from her many books, The Measure of Her Powers showcases Fisher's versatility, providing new readers and loyal fans alike with a sampler from her wide-ranging body of work...read more (view table of contents, read Amazon.com's description)

Offers a selection of Fisher's writings from throughout her career, on topics ranging from food and travel to aging. (view table of contents)

A collection of recorded materials and interviews offers fascinating and candid portraits of some of the leading public figures of the twentieth century, including Stephen Ambrose on Nizon, Edmund Morris on Reagan, and discussions with Cyra McFadden, Frank McCort, and others.

(view table of contents)

Product Description: During the last years of her life, Mary Frances Kennedy Fisher began reflecting aloud over a large collection of old family photos, envisioning a scrapbook of people, places, and times past. This volume showcases these photos, with extended anecdotal captions taken from her published and unpublished writings...read more (view table of contents, read Amazon.com's description)

Product Description: Along with To Begin Again and Stay Me, Oh Comfort Me, this anthology was the last project M.F.K. Fisher worked on before her death in 1992. Last House presents a frank, wry, and revealing portrait of Fisher's life, her loves, and herself. 304 pp.