Food, Drink, and the Written Word in Britain, 1820-1945: (Warwick Series in the Humanities)

This volume explores the intersection between culinary history and literature across a period of profound social and cultural change. Split into four parts, essays focus on the relationships between eating and childhood reading in the Victorian era, the role of hunger in depicting social instability and reform, the cultivation of taste through advertising and the formation of cultural legacies through imaginative and emotional experiences of food and drink. Contributors show that studying consumption is necessary for a full understanding of class, gender, national identity and the body. The works of writers such as Elizabeth Gaskell, Edward Lear, Isabella Beeton and Bram Stoker are considered alongside advice manuals, Home Front narratives and advertising to provide an innovative work that will be of interest to scholars of social, cultural and medical history as well as literary studies.

Table of Contents:
Introduction Mary Addyman, Laura Wood, and Christopher Yiannitsaros Part I – Devouring Didacticism: Feeding Young Minds Chapter 1 – Sweet Poison: Food Adulteration and Fiction Laura Wood Chapter 2 – Onions and Honey, Roast Spiders and Chutney: Unusual Appetites and Disorderly Consumption in Edward Lear’s Nonsense Verse Charlotte Boyce Part II – An Appetite for Change: Hunger and Nineteenth-Century Society Chapter 3 – The Rhetoric of Taste: Reform, Hunger and Consumption in Elizabeth Gaskell’s Mary Barton Lesa Scholl Chapter 4 – Feeding the Vampire: The Ravenous Hunger of the Fin de Siècle Angelica Michelis Part III – The Power of the Printed Word: Advertising and Markets Chapter 5 – ‘A change comes over the spirit of your vision’: Champagne in Britain Graham Harding Chapter 6 – The Language of Advertising: Fashioning Health Consumers at the Fin de Siècle Lesley Steinitz Part IV – Into the Twentieth Century: Legacies and Memories Chapter 7 – ‘Yes, We had no Bananas’: Sharing Memories of the Second World War Corinna Peniston-Bird Chapter 8 – Meeting Mrs Beeton: The Personal is Political in the Recipe Book Margaret Beetham Conclusion ‘All else is vain, but eating is real’: Gustatory Bodies Mary Addyman

About the Author :
Mary Addyman recently completed her PhD at the Department of English and Comparative Literary Studies, University of Warwick, UK Laura Wood recently completed her PhD at the Department of English and Comparative Literary Studies, University of Warwick, UK Christopher Yiannitsaros recently completed his PhD at the Department of English and Comparative Literary Studies, University of Warwick, UK