Jean-Anthelme Brillat-Savarin, (1755-1826) was a French lawyer, politician and epicure who, with Alexandre Balthazar Laurent Grimod de La Reynière, founded the genre of gastronomic writing. This, his most famous work, has never been out of print. In a series of meditations that owe something to Montaigne's Essays, and have the discursive rhythm of an age of leisured reading and a confident pursuit of educated pleasures, Brillat-Savarin discourses on the pleasures of the table, which he considers a science. It is interesting to note that he considered sugar and white flour to be the cause of obesity.

8vo., xxiii, 416pp., engraved portrait frontispiece and seven engraved plates by Bertall, illustrated title-page vignette, numerous wood-engravings in the text, occasional light foxing throughout. Fine French-style calf, spine richly gilt with label, a.e.g.