Literary Feasts: Inspired Eating from Classic Fiction

Our busy twenty-first-century lifestyle doesn't allow much time for us to enjoy the pleasures of a good meal. Literary Feasts aims to change that by restoring readers' desires to eat, drink, and be merry.

While Leopold Bloom fortified himself for his rambles through Dublin with a hearty breakfast of grilled kidneys with pepper, thinly sliced bread and butter, and a large pot of tea, James Bond started his days off with a half pint of chilled OJ, three scrambled eggs, two cups of black coffee, and a pack of Chesterfields. The lucky revelers invited to Jay Gatsby's mansion feasted on baked hams, pastry pigs, and turkeys bewitched to dark gold, all washed down with champagne served in glasses the size of finger bowls. And of course P. G. Wodehouse made sure that Bertie Wooster always dined in style. The eating scenes gathered here -- drawn from the works of Dickens, Robert Louis Stevenson, Jane Austen, Mark Twain, Chekhov, Christina Rossetti, Louisa May Alcott, Shakespeare, and many other great writers -- will inspire even the most jaded of palates. Literary Feasts includes a bounty of practical ideas, too, on how readers can dress up, prepare the food themselves, and make truly memorable occasions. Literary Feasts is perfect for book lovers who live to eat.