PRAISE FOR M.F.K. FISHER

“M.F.K. Fisher . . . brings onstage a peach or a brace of quail and shows us history, cities, fantasies, memories, emotions.”

—PATRICIA STORACE, The New York Review of Books

“Food is what she wrote about, although to leave it at that is reductionist in the extreme. What she really wrote about was the passion, the importance of living boldly instead of cautiously; oh, what scorn she had for timid eaters, timid lovers, people who took timid stands, or none at all, on matters of principle.” —San Francisco Examiner

“I do not know of anyone in the United States who writes better prose.”

—W. H. AUDEN, author of The Age of Anxiety

“M.F.K. Fisher is our greatest food writer because she puts food in the mount, the mind, and the imagination all at the same time. Beyond the gastronomical bravura, she is a passionate woman; food is her metaphor.”

—SHANA ALEXANDER, New York Times bestselling

author of Nutcracker

“Poet of the appetites.” —JOHN UPDIKE, author of Rabbit, Run

“She writes about fleeting tastes and feasts vividly, excitingly, sensuously, exquisitely. There is almost a wicked thrill in following her uninhibited track through the glories of the good life.”

—JAMES BEARD, author of The James Beard Cookbook

“She writes about food as others do about love, but rather better.”

—CLIFTON FADIMAN, author of Lifetime Reading Plan

“If I were still teaching high school English, I’d use [Fisher’s] books to show how to write simply, how to enjoy food and drink, but, most of all, how to enjoy life. Her books and letters are one feast after another.”

—FRANK McCOURT, Pulitzer Prize–winning author of Angela’s Ashes

“This enlightening cornucopia of writings toasts the pleasures of food, drink and celebration in literature . . . This is a refreshing, nourishing and fulfilling sampler from a connoisseur of a genre she has created.”

—Publishers Weekly

“This is unique . . . a collection of excerpts from world literature, concerned with eating and drinking . . . There’s gastronomy in fantasy and nonsense, in history of pioneering, in regional writing, in studies of manners. And always—in her inimitable way—there is M.F.K. Fisher.”

—Kirkus Reviews