Books & eBooks

In addition to the main S. Food &c. shelfmark there are separate collections for a number of foodstuffs and drinks which take in social and economic aspects. These include Beer &c. Cheese, Cocoa, Coffee, Hops, Salt, Sugar, Tea, Vegetarianism, Vinegar, Vines, and Wine. Some are very small indeed but reflect the Victorian arrangement of the collection originally. Most of the shelfmarks will have a 4to (quarto) collection as well as the standard 8o (octavo) collection.

S. Food &c.

Includes diet, recipes, regional histories, general histories, customs, advice, works on some individual foodstuffs such as bread, potatoes, jams etc., conference papers, and all manner of general observations about food. Many of the earlier 18th and 19th century works offer advice on household management and include recipes as well as stain removal tips and how to control servants. There are also plenty on dietary concerns both from the health as well as meal-planning angles. The collection does not include large numbers of regional recipe books as might be found in a general bookshop. There are no popular celebrity chefs in the current mode but a few works by chefs of earlier periods are represented. There are also no modern housekeeping or household management works but a good number of earlier works dating up to the beginning of the 20th century.  

S. Beer &c.

Covers the history of brewing and of brewers. There are a few small titles from a Whitbread series.

S. Cheese

This includes the history of cheesemaking, specific cheese histories, regional and world histories and a cheese companion.

S. Cocoa

This is one of a number of foodstuffs-as-commodities where the bulk of the titles concern commercial and industrial aspects, including company histories. There are histories of Rowntree and Cadbury as well as the history of chocolate in Mesoamerica.

S. Coffee

Another foodstuff-as-commodity with an emphasis on the cultivation and commerce but little on company histories. There are a few titles on the running of coffee plantations for aspiring planters.

S. Drink

There are numerous works on the temperance movement and the problems of alcohol and alcoholism. There are also works on the drinks’ trade, one or two non-brewing or wine-making company histories (e.g. Bulmers), tracts on abstinence, titles on legislation, Prohibition, and the Anti-Saloon League Yearbooks from 1918-1925. There is also a recipe book for making liqueurs.  The 4to. collection has a number of works on specific spirits and drinks mostly published in the past 30 years.

S. Fruit

Works on specific fruit, cultivation and use as well as company histories.

S. Hops

The three titles here can be listed in full: J. F. Brown’s Guinness and hops, 1980; and the two delightfully entitled Hopping in Kent by Alan Bignell, 1977 and Hops and hopping by J.B. Marsh, 1892. There are also 2 or 3 pamphlet titles listed in the subject index for 1913 and a Parliamentary Paper.

S. Salt

Titles here cover the salt industry as well as histories of salt production and diet and health aspects. The earliest is James Rattan’s Handbook of common salt, published in Madras in 1877.

S. Sugar

Titles cover the slave-trade aspect and also the sugar industry including company histories, the botany of sugar as well as planters’ manuals. There is quite a number of pamphlet items listed in the older London Library subject index volumes in the Foyle Lightwell Reading Room, as well as Parliamentary Papers; some of the pamphlets are 18th century and are bound into a number of different volumes within the main locked Pamphlet collection; please ask at the Issue Desk.

S. Tea

Titles here as with other foodstuff-as-commodity cover the commerce and industry, company histories and manuals for potential planters as well as histories of specific teas and customs. There are also a small number of 18th century pamphlets listed in the LL subject index volumes, mostly on the taxation of tea. These may be located within the main locked Pamphlet collection and accessed via the Issue Desk.

S. Vegetarianism

A small but interesting collection of titles.  Works on vegetables and fruit as a diet are found in S. Food &c. from which we would suggest the theory is found in S. Vegetarianism but the practice in S. Food &c.

S. Vinegar

An extremely small section comprising 3 titles: Louis Pasteur’s Etudes sur le vinaigre, sa fabrication, ses maladies, ses moyens de les prévenir; nouvelles observations sur la conservation des vins par la chaleur, 1868 ; The manufacture of vinegar, 1871 by the appropriately named M. Dussauce and The vinegar cupboard : recipes and history of an everyday ingredient  by Angela Clutton, 2019.

S. Vines

Another smallish section concerned here with cultivation of vines for 19th and early 20th century readers and some later regional histories.

S. Wine

This is the other main area of the food and drink collection. This section covers wines in general, regional production, individual labels, anthologies of wine writing, drinking companions and to some degree some overlap with S. Vines. There is quite a number of works on individual wines or spirits from both the 19th and 20th century with a fair number of these in the 4to. section.

Bibliog. Food & Drink

A collection of works on food and drink with bibliographies on food and cookery, household management, and wine. There are also a couple of auction catalogues of notable collectors in the subject.

R.R. Dicts., Food & Drink

The titles here include the Larousse Gastronomique 1938, Food of the western world by Theodora Fitzgibbon, 1978 and the Oxford companion to food (2nd ed. 2006) and the Oxford companion to American food and drink, 2007, the Oxford companion to wine edited by Jancis Robinson (2006) and the Oxford companion to the wines of North America edited by Bruce Cass, 2000, a Hachette atlas of wine, 2000,  Lichine’s encyclopedia of wine, 1982, and Andre Simon’s Dictionary of wine, spirits and liqueurs, 1958.