This lecture will go through a chronological history of American community cookbooks, a genre of fundraising cookbook that have been called “an American phenomenon” due to their emergence and popularity in the United States (Longone and Longone, 1984). Published and sold first by women’s groups in the late nineteenth century and later by a wide range of clubs, associations, collectives, and political organizations, community cookbooks provide one way to examine how many underrepresented groups have found outlets in an unexpected resource—cooking manuals. In addition to giving details of individual books and eras, they lecture will connect to broader themes within Book Studies, such as community and self-publishing, print and binding technologies, literary awards, and the status of rare books.

Kurs im HIS-LSF