Early Modern English Foodways

Early Modern English Foodways: A Critical Sourcebook is the first anthology of food-related writing in Renaissance England. Bringing together seventy passages from a two-hundred-year sweep of British history, the volume demonstrates how food connects all forms of life in the most intimate and public ways.

The sourcebook offers new insights into the early modern experience of sustenance. It introduces readers to the tribulations of the women who started a 1629 grain riot, reveals the primacy of eating in Thomas More's Utopia, and explains the significance of posset pots and wedding cultery. The volume features familiar voices such as Spenser, Shakespeare, Jonson, and Milton alongside lesser-known texts and objects to illuminate broader questions of gender, body, hospitality, religion, medicine, social status, ecology, and empire. Drawing from an expansive range of sources—including recipe books, travel narratives, philosophical treatises, and agricultural handbooks—these entries, many previously unpublished, have been expertly curated by leading scholars to map food's journey through early modern English culture.

With modern spelling adaptations, contextual headnotes, and comprehensive glossaries of culinary terms, this sourcebook is an accessible and engaging entry point into the field of early modern food studies, ready to use in and beyond the classroom. Its interdisciplinary focus makes this resource of value to students and scholars interested not only in food history but also in cultural studies, art history, and literature.