OP: Reflexions

Brick Tower Press, New York, 1999. Hardcover. Fine. First printing.

Iowa-born Richard Olney (1927–1999) was a major figure in steering the great post-war American rediscovery of French food. Moving to France in 1950, Olney, a painter and a writer, settled at first in Paris and then in Provence, where he lived out the rest of his life.

His first book, The French Menu Cookbook (1970), proved to be highly influential, attracting American cooks with its combination of freshness, seasonality, and deep flavor. Though he was somewhat reclusive, Olney’s hillside home in the south of France became a sort of Mecca where visionaries like Elizabeth David, Alice Waters, Kermit Lynch, and James Baldwin were drawn.

Reflexions (1999), Olney’s final book, published posthumously, is exactly as the title promises—a look back on a life deeply embedded in the food world, and one which, at least retrospectively, we can see as an axis around which a great many big ideas and personalities spun. It lacks some of the polish he brought to works completed in his lifetime, but reveals a man devoted to French food and wine.

Ours is a Near Fine first printing with light shelfwear to the jacket. Hardcover.