Fisher, M. F. K.

Related Category: Food and Cooking: Biographies

(Mary Frances Kennedy Fisher), 1908–92, American culinary writer, b. Albion, Mich. Raised in California, Fisher lived in France for three years, where she was inspired by Brillat-Savarin's philosophy of life and translated his The Physiology of Taste (1949). Her writings are more than just recipes; they are culinary essays written in a distinctively graceful literary style that also offer philosophical reflections, reminiscences, and anecdotes. Her books include Serve It Forth (1937), How to Cook a Wolf (1942), The Gastronomical Me (1943), Time-Life's The Cooking of Provincial France (1968), and With Bold Knife and Fork (1979). Fisher's posthumously published trilogy of reminiscences are To Begin Again (1992), Stay Me, Oh Comfort Me (1993), and Last House (1995).

See her letters ed. by N. K. Barr, M. Moran, and P. Moran (1997); autobiographical writings ed. by D. Gioia (1997); biography by J. Reardon (2004).