"THE FIRST THING I COOKED WAS PURE POISON"

FISHER, M. F. K. The Gastronomical Me. New York: Duell, Sloan & Pearce, (1943). Octavo, original green cloth, original dust jacket. $950.

First edition of these gastronomical memoirs.

"Fisher's writing is cool passion and vintage quality, a simultaneity of objective and subjective perspectives. Alchemy is what she performed. Practical, personal, and profound, her books are about food, its preparation and reception. She never set a table without setting a scene; to offer something bare of context would never have occurred to her. Innumerable critics, writers, and readers have recognized the brilliant prose and literary pearls slyly content to be clothed in the seeming ordinariness of cookery, just as the oyster shell covers the dual and different delicacies of flesh and gem" (ANB). First-issue dust jacket, with the author in a romantic reclining pose; the jacket was withdrawn almost immediately after publication and replaced by one featuring a more conservative image.

Book with slightest foxing to endpapers and most minor wear to cloth, fragile wartime dust jacket with only slight soiling and light wear. A near-fine copy.