Brillat- savarin

1925 · 11037 — London: Peter Davies 1925. Second-hand hardcover. <p>Brillat-Savarin Jean Anthelme. The Physiology of Taste: or meditations on transcendental gastronomy. Limited Ed 685/750 Peter Davies: London 1925. 4to 285x190mm qtr bnd vellum marbled bds xx3262pp. introduction by Arthur Machen</p> <p><br /> BRILLAT-SAVARIN Jean-Anthelme 1755-1826<br /> <br /> The Physiology of Taste: or meditations on transcendental gastronomy. Newly served up in English. With an introduction by Arthur Machen : a biographical note : a portrait of the author : and forty designs by Andrew Johnson.<br /> <br /> London : Peter Davies 1925. Limited centenary edition number 685 of 750 copies only; First edition thus. Printed by T and A Constable at the University Press Edinburgh.<br /> <br /> Octavo 285x190mm illustrated printed cream dust jacket quarter bound vellum gilt titled blue marbled paper boards fore and bottom edges untrimmed wide margins xx3262pp : π² a⸠b² A-U⸠Xâ´. Monochrome engraved frontispiece portrait of the author and chapter headpieces. Dust jacket lightly soiled chipped to head and foot of spine closed tear old repair and small hole to upper wrapper faint foxing; board edges lightly worn otherwise spine and boards bright and clean corners gently bruised; endpapers top and fore-edge lightly foxed; internally bright and crisp.<br /> <br /> ¶ Peter Davies was known as the original Peter Pan; informally adopted by Sir James M Barrie after the death of Peter's parents.  The Physiology of Taste was the first book published by Peter Davies on establishing his publishing business in 1925¹. Later that year he folded his imprint into Peter Davies Ltd established with assistance from Barrie.  Arthur Machen was the pen-name of Arthur Llewellyn Jones 1863-1947 a Welsh journalist and author most notably of The Great God Pan and The Secret Glory. Andrew Johnson 1893-19173 was born in Portsmouth and studied at the Central School of Art and Design in London. He is now remembered principally as a railways and travel advertising poster designer during the 1930s. <br /> <br /> Brillat-Savarin was a French lawyer and politician during and after the French revolution. Renowned as an epicure and gastronome he worked on his Physiologie du Gout all his life assembling it just before he died; it was privately published at his expense just two months before his death. Neither a cookery book nor a memoir it is rather a discussion of the nature of eating in its widest sense. It starts with twenty gastronomical "aphorismes" perhaps the best known being "IV tell me what you eat and I will tell you who you are"; then thirty "méditations" and finishes with twenty-seven 'variétés' in the form of anecdotes adventures recipes and inventions.<br /> <br /> "For the French and outsides alike this work early attained the status of an exemplary culinary text perhaps the exemplary text. the Physiology of Taste civilizes eating. Moreover it socializes food and it does so by recounting in story after story our social relations with food. it appears to us today as something of a sociology of taste ahead of its time" ²<br /> <br /> An elegant copy of only the second complete English translation³ of one of the foundational works of gastronomy in a limited fine publisher's deluxe binding.<br /> <br /> § Institutionally well held in North America and the UK; no recorded holdings in Australasia.<br /> § cf Bitting p.61 for the New York published parallel centenary edition; neither edition in Cagle.<br /> <br /> ¹ Warder and Dublin Weekly Mail - Saturday 27 February 1926 p.6<br /> ² Ferguson Priscilla Parkhurst . Accounting for Taste: The Triumph of French Cuisine Chicago: University of Chicago Press 2004 p. 31<br /> ³ The first complete English translation was published as A Handbook of Gastronomy by Nimmo & Bain in 1883. Earlier English language editions were only partial translations. Both the 1883 and 1925 complete translations are not attributed.</p> Peter Davies unknown