M.F.K. FISHER
Dates: 1908-1992
Nationality: American
Literary Periods:
American Confessional Period, 1960-
American Conformity and Criticism Period, 1930-1960
Postwar Period, 1945-1999
Twentieth Century, 1900-1999
RELATED AUTHORS
- Jean Anthelme Brillat-Savarin
- Laurie Colwin
- Elizabeth David
- Hugh Fearnley-Whittingstall
- Paul Freedman
- Calvin Trillin
REFERENCE & BACKGROUND INFORMATION
Scribner Writers Series [DATABASE]
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RESEARCH & CRITICISM
Books, essays, and journal articles indexed in MLA International Bibliography 
[Database]
MLA International Bibliography is the definitive literary research database, indexing the most authoritative M.F.K. Fisher scholarship published in books and academic journals. MLA indexes and links to the entire JSTOR literary research collection as well as linking to many other full-text providers and the Colby College Libraries catalog. If you discover books or articles through MLA that are not available at Colby or through our lending partners, please request these items using your ILLiad Account.
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- M.F.K.: American Writer Mary Frances Kennedy Fisher [MOVIE]By Barbara Wornum | Miller Library Video 2739
M. F. K. Fisher among the Pots and Pans (2008) by
From her very first book, Serve It Forth, M.F.K. Fisher wrote about her ideal kitchen. In her subsequent publications, she revisited the many kitchens she had known and the foods she savored in them to express her ideas about the art of eating. M.F.K. Fisher among the Pots and Pans, interspersed with recipes and richly illustrated with original watercolors, is a retrospective of Mary Frances Kennedy Fisher's life as it unfolded in those homey settings--from Fisher's childhood in Whittier, California, to the kitchens of Dijon, where she developed her taste for French foods and wines; from the idyllic kitchen at Le Paquis to the isolation of her home in Hemet, California; and finally to her last days in the Napa and Sonoma Valleys. M.F.K. Fisher was a solitary cook who interpreted the scenario of a meal in her own way, and M.F.K. Fisher among the Pots and Pans provides a deeply personal glimpse of a woman who continues to mystify even as she commands our attention.
Call Number: E-BookISBN: 9780520255555
Poet of the Appetites (2004) by
In more than thirty books, M.F.K. Fisher forever changed the way Americans understood not only the art of eating but the art of living. Whether considering the oyster or describing how to cook a wolf, she addressed the universal needs "for protection, food, love." Readers were instantly drawn into her circle of husbands and lovers, artists and artisans; they felt they knew Fisher herself, whether they encountered her as a child with a fried-egg sandwich in her pocket, a young bride awakening to the glories of French food, or a seductress proffering the first peas of the season. Oldest child, wife, mother, mistress, self-made career woman, trail-blazing writer--Fisher served up each role with panache. But like many master stylists, she was also a master mythologizer. Her portraits and scenarios were often unrecognizable to those on whom they were based, and her own emotions and experiences remained cloaked in ambiguity. To retell her story as it really happened is an important enterprise, and Joan Reardon has made the most of her access to Fisher, her family and friends, and her private papers. This multifaceted portrayal of the woman John Updike christened the "poet of the appetites" is no less memorable than the personae Fisher crafted for herself.
Call Number: Miller TX649.F5 R43 2004ISBN: 0865475628
An Extravagant Hunger (2011) by
In An Extravagant Hunger, time slows and is relished, and the turning points and casual strolls of M.F.K. Fisher's life are unwrapped and savored. From the Berengaria that washed her across the sea to France in 1929, to Le Paquis, the Swiss estate that later provided a backdrop for some of the most idyllic and fleeting moments of her life, the stories of Fisher's love for food and her love for family and men are meticulously researched and exquisitely captured in this book. Exploring Fisher's lonely and formative time in Europe with her first husband; her subsequent divorce and re-marriage to her creative sparkplug, Dillwyn Parrish, and his tragic suicide; and the child she carried from an unnamed father, the story of M.F.K. Fisher's life becomes as vibrant and passionate as her prolific words on wine and cuisine. Letters and journal entries piece together a dramatic life, but An Extravagant Hunger steps further, bridging the gaps between personal notes and her public persona, filling in the silences by offering an engaging and unprecedented depth of intuitive commentary. With a passion of her own, Anne Zimmerman is the careful witness, lingering beside M.F.K. Fisher through her most dramatic and productive years.
Call Number: Maine CatISBN: 9781582435466
PRIMARY SOURCES
A Stew or a Story (2006) by
Like the savory, simple dishes she favored, M. F. K. Fisher's writing was often "short, stylish, concentrated in flavor, and varied in form," writes Joan Reardon in her introduction to this eclectic, lively collection. Magazine writing launched and helped to sustain Fisher's long, illustrious career and in these fifty-seven pieces we experience again the inimitable voice of the woman widely known to have elevated food writing to a literary art. A Stew or a Story covers five decades of Fisher's writing for such notable and diverse publications as Gourmet, Bon Appetit, Ladies Home Journal, Atlantic Monthly, Harper's Bazaar, The New York Times, The New Yorker, and Vogue. But collected here also are articles nearly impossible to find from lesser-known, more ephemeral magazines. Essays on people, places, and of course food, mix here with delightful fiction to become a delectable feast.
Call Number: Miller TX649.F5 R445 2006ISBN: 9781593761158
Stay Me, Oh Comfort Me (1993) by
The second volume of reminiscences by one of America's best-loved writers, now in paperback. The book reveals Fisher's "magnificent resilience, the comfort she took from daily writing, her marvelous powers of observation and humor, and, of course, her lifelong attractions to good food and drink."--San Francisco Chronicle. From the Trade Paperback edition.
Call Number: Miller PS3511.I7428 Z468 1993ISBN: 0679427252
Consider the Oyster (1988) by
M.F.K. Fisher, whom John Updike has called our "poet of the appetites," here pays tribute to that most delicate and enigmatic of foods---the oyster. As she tells of oysters found in stews, in soups, roasted, baked, fried, prepared à la Rockefeller or au naturel--and of the pearls sometimes found therein--Fisher describes her mother's joy at encountering oyster loaf in a girls' dorm in he 1890's, recalls her own initiation into the "strange cold succulence" of raw oysters as a young woman in Marseille and Dijon, and explores both the bivalve's famed aphrodisiac properties and its equally notorious gut-wrenching powers. Plumbing the "dreadful but exciting" life of the oyster, Fisher invites readers to share in the comforts and delights that this delicate edible evokes, and enchants us along the way with her characteristically wise and witty prose.
Call Number: Bates TX754.O98 F57 1988ISBN: 0865473358
Two Towns in Provence (1983) by
This volume brings together two delightful books--Map of Another Town and A Considerable Town--by one of our most beloved food and travel writers. In her inimitable style, here M.F.K. Fisher tells the stories--and reveals the secrets--of two quintessential French cities. Map of Another Town, Fisher's memoir of the French provincial capital of Aix-en-Provence is, as the author tells us, "my picture, my map, of a place and therefore of myself," and a vibrant and perceptive profile of the kinship between a person and a place. Then, in A Considerable Town, she scans the centuries to reveal the ancient sources that clarify the Marseille of today and the indestructible nature of its people, and in so doing weaves a delightful journey filtered through the senses of a profound writer.
Call Number: Bates DC801.A325 F525 1983ISBN: 0394716310
A Life in Letters (1997) by
In these pages, M. F. K. Fisher's letters are made public for the first time. Selected and compiled by her younger sister, her longtime secretary, and a close family friend, these highly personal pieces reveal some of Fisher's most private moments over six decades, giving ample display to her sharp wit and affectionate humor, her ongoing reflections on loss and the power to change. M. F. K. Fisher: A Life in Letters features an introduction by Anne Lamott and includes thirty-two pages of photographs from Fisher's family collection. Standing alongside her nonfiction, fiction, translation, and journals, this collection represents an important addition to the oeuvre of one of America's great literary talents.
Call Number: Bowdoin PS3511.I7428 Z48 1997ISBN: 1887178465
Last House (1995) by
The final volume in a trilogy of selections from the journals, short stories, and correspondence of one of America's best-loved writers. With style, humor, and spare, elegant prose, Fisher retraces her adventures in France as a young housewife, recalls her return to California, and ruminates on such favorite themes as food, literature, and relationships.
Call Number: Miller PS3511.I7428 Z466 1995ISBN: 0679439080
Sister Age (1984) by
In these fifteen remarkable stories, M.F.K. Fisher, one of the most admired writers of our time, embraces the coming of old age. With a saint to guide us, she writes, perhaps we can accept in a loving way "the inevitable visits of a possibly nagging harpy like Sister Age" But in the stories, it is the human strength in the unavoidable encounter with the end of life that Fisher dramatizes so powerfully. Other themes--the importance of witnessing death, the marvelous resilience of the old, the passing of vanity--are all explored with insight, sympathy and, often, a sly wit.
Call Number: Miller HQ1061 .F54 1984ISBN: 0394723856
How to Cook a Wolf (1944) by
"I do not know of any one in the United States who writes better prose." --W.H. Auden Written to inspire courage in those daunted by wartimes shortages, How to Cook a Wolf continues to rally cooks during times of plenty, reminding them that providing sustenance requires more than putting food on the table. M. F. K. Fisher knew that the last thing hungry people needed were hints on cutting back and making do. Instead, she gives her readers license to dream, to experiment, to construct adventurous and delicious meals as a bulwark against a dreary, meager present. Her fine prose provides reason in itself to draw our chairs close to the hearth; we can still enjoy her company and her exhortations to celebrate life by eating well.
Call Number: Miller Special Collection ROBSN TX715 .F542 1944
From the Journals of M. F. K. Fisher (1999) by
"M.F.K. Fisher is to literary prose," wrote theChicago Sun-Times, "what Laurence Olivier is to acting." From the Journals of M.F.K. Fishercombines into one volume three acclaimed collections of journals, correspondence, and short stories, the earliest piece written when Fisher was nineteen and the last composed shortly before her death in 1992, at age eighty-three. "To Begin Again" gives us a portrait of Fisher's early years, from her family's migration to California in 1912 to her first marriage in 1929. Here she begins to learn about the art of "living well gastronomically" and acquires an appreciation for the nurturance of both body and soul. "Stay Me, Oh Comfort Me" presents a candid portrait of the most traumatic period of Fisher's life -- her divorce from her husband, her marriage to their friend Dillwyn Parrish, and Parrish's tragic illness and death. "Last House" offers a wry look at an artist grappling with old age and illness, and a poignant remembrance of the experiences that shaped her life's work. Filled with humor, wisdom, and beautifully crafted prose, this collection will introduce to a new generation the life and work of one of the most beloved writers of our era.
Call Number: Bowdoin PS3511.I7428 Z465 1999ISBN: 0375708073
