Literature of Food: An Introduction from 1830 to Present

Why are so many literary texts preoccupied with food? The Literature of Food explores this question by looking at the continually shifting relationship between two sorts of foods: the real and the imagined. Focusing particularly on Britain and North America from the early 19th century to the present, it covers a wide range of issues including the politics of food, food as performance, and its intersections with gender, class, fear and disgust. Combining the insights of food studies and literary analysis, Nicola Humble considers the multifarious ways in which food both works and plays within texts, and the variety of functions-ideological, mimetic, symbolic, structural, affective-which it serves. Carefully designed and structured for use on the growing number of literature of food courses, it examines the food of modernism, post-modernism, the realist novel and children's literature, and asks what happens when we treat cook books as literary texts. From food memoirs to the changing role of the servant, experimental cook books to the cannibalistic fears in infant picture books, The Literature of Food demonstrates that food is always richer and stranger than we think.

Review: A convivial, thoughtful, and humane contribution to the varieties of literary experience that food has generated. * World of Fine Wine *
This introduction to "the literature of food" will appeal to scholars and students alike. With her characteristic wit and lucidity, Humble tackles themes like hunger and disgust, genres like children's literature and food memoirs, and dynamics like class tensions and gender roles. An ample repast for the eager reader. * Associate Professor at University of South Carolina, USA *
This is a thrilling, compendious study of English literature and its handling of the vibrant stuff of food. Its tone is consistent from beginning to end: friendly, authoritative, interested and interesting. Nicola Humble is a superb guide to a literary tradition that goes far beyond metaphor in treating food as the stuff of nightmares, hatred, violence and, above all, love. * Andrew Warnes, University of Leeds, UK and author of How Shopping Carts Explain Global Consumerism (2018) *
Conveys the magnitude of this fascinating subject while brilliantly performing its stated task as an "introduction" to food in literature with a thorough, compelling analysis of the select corpus and themes. * English Studies *