The French invented the restaurant in the late eighteenth century. Not long after, they invented gastronomy, the modern art of eating well: English society discovered the French chef and the English-speaking world has never been the same. This delicious anthology brings together the major English and French nineteenth-century writings on the arts and pleasures of the table. Included are essays by Grimod de la Reynière, Brillat-Savarin, Alexandre Dumas, Charles Lamb, William Thackeray and lesser-known works by pseudonymous authors such as Launcelot Sturgeon and Dick Humelbergius Secundus.