OP: Brillat-Savarin: The Judge and His Stomach
Ivan R. Dee, Chicago, 1992. Hardcover. Near Fine.
Jean Anthelme Brillat-Savarin (1755–1826)—lawyer, violinist, survivor of the Reign of Terror—is best remembered as the popularizer of gastronomy, the art of eating. Though a published writer on many subjects, Brillat-Savarin had only one book on food, and it appeared just two months before he died.
Physiologie du Goût (1825), or The Physiology of Taste, is frequently cited among professional cooks, food writers, and foodies, alike. Brillat-Savarin’s quippy aphorisms and thoughtful musings, thanks in part to his 20th century philosophical counterpart MFK Fisher’s translation, still resonate 200 years later. It is a wonder, then, that a full-length biography wasn’t written until the 1990s.
Historian Giles MacDonogh, in Brillat-Savarin: The Judge and His Stomach (1992), thoughtfully contextualizes the writer within a volatile France where the abundance of both fear and hope, perhaps, inspired great appreciation for life’s pleasures.
Our copy is a Near Fine hardcover.
