This volume explores the intersection between culinary history and literature across a period of profound social and cultural change. Split into three parts, essays focus on the food scandals of the early Victorian era, the decadence and greed of late Victorian and Edwardian Britain, and the effects of austerity caused by two world wars.

IntroductionMary Addyman, Laura Wood, and Christopher YiannitsarosPart I – Devouring Didacticism: Feeding Young MindsChapter 1 – Sweet Poison: Food Adulteration and FictionLaura WoodChapter 2 – Onions and Honey, Roast Spiders and Chutney: Unusual Appetites and Disorderly Consumption in Edward Lear’s Nonsense VerseCharlotte BoycePart II – An Appetite for Change: Hunger and Nineteenth-Century SocietyChapter 3 – The Rhetoric of Taste: Reform, Hunger and Consumption in Elizabeth Gaskell’s Mary BartonLesa SchollChapter 4 – Feeding the Vampire: The Ravenous Hunger of the Fin de SiècleAngelica MichelisPart III – The Power of the Printed Word: Advertising and MarketsChapter 5 – ‘A change comes over the spirit of your vision’: Champagne in BritainGraham HardingChapter 6 – The Language of Advertising: Fashioning Health Consumers at the Fin de SiècleLesley SteinitzPart IV – Into the Twentieth Century: Legacies and MemoriesChapter 7 – ‘Yes, We had no Bananas’: Sharing Memories of the Second World WarCorinna Peniston-BirdChapter 8 – Meeting Mrs Beeton: The Personal is Political in the Recipe BookMargaret BeethamConclusion‘All else is vain, but eating is real’: Gustatory BodiesMary Addyman