Posts Tagged → illustrated

Feasts for All Seasons

by Roy Andries de Groot

SIGNED by illustrator! | First Edition | Alfred A. Knopf | 1966

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It’s Thanksgiving Day here in the US and what better way to celebrate than with a really huge meal cooked for your family and friends! And what better way to do that than with Roy Andries de Groot’s seasonally-focused cookbook, A Feast for All Seasons. 

Broken into four gastronomic seasons: The Spring, Summer Harvest, Fall Holiday Season, and Winter Dog Days, this book includes numerous recipes built around the peak season for each ingredient and celebrating a wide variety of holidays stemming from many diverse cultures.

But for the Fall Holiday Season, which includes the months of October, November, and December, de Groot focuses mainly on the preparation of meals for Thanksgiving and Christmas. Lists of seasonal foods–wild game, fish, root vegetables, squashes, nuts, and fruits–are included alongside a lengthy discussion of hot beverages, a quick aside on kumquats, and a meditation on honey. 

Holidays included in the season: 

  • October 10th – the Double Ten holiday, celebrating the China’s freedom from the Manchu Dynasty in 1910
  • October 29th – The Foundation of the Republic Day, celebrated in Turkey
  • October 31st – Halloween!
  • November 1st – The Independence Day of Algeria
  • Late November – Thanksgiving
  • November 30th – St Andrew’s Day, a Scottish holiday
  • December 13th – St Lucia’s Day, celebrated in Sweden
  • December 24th – Christmas Eve
  • December 31st – New Year’s Eve celebrated in German style

And yet, despite the traditional nature of all holiday celebrations, de Groot proclaims that “We refuse to be hidebound traditionalists about our Thanksgiving and Christmas feasts” and suggests suckling pig, venison, or turkey for either meal. He urges you to be creative, to break away from the same old standard fare and to try the vast gastromic delights of autumn.

Now onto the feast! The remaining 13 pages of the chapter are recipes for cream of pumpkin soup, roast turkey with fruit and chestnut stuffing, apples molded in a scarlet overcoat, yams with apricots and sunflower seeds, Brillat-Savarin’s spinach, and a demitasse selection of drinks. When to start preparation of each dish, ideas for finger-foods and relishes, best ways to serve each item, and last minute garnishes are all included in de Groots recipes. 

But perhaps the most useful information de Groot includes in all his timetables on when and how to prepare each portion of each dish, is actually included in the Acknowledgements at the front of the cookbook, “This book began as an idea within our family. It became the shared project of many of our friends.” That is the heart of any feast–and it is reflected in the language used throughout the book. “We” cooked the food. De Groot, his family and friends, you the reader, your family and friends, and everyone else who ever tested out one of these recipes. Feasts are communal and–over a lovingly prepared meal–we give thanks that we’re all together. Which when it’s all boiled down, is the heart of all holidays. 

P.S. – This particular edition of Feasts for All Seasons is inscribed by the illustrator, Tom Funk “My Best Wishes at Christmas” and dated 1966. And since the recipient is unknown, we can imagine that he’s reaching through time and wishing us all a happy holiday season.

Amphigorey Too

by Edward Gorey

SIGNED | First Edition | G. P. Putnam’s Sons | 1975

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Edward Gorey was a Creative with a capital C – a writer, illustrator, set and costume designer, fur coat-clad style icon, and eccentric companion to a host of artists and intellectuals who formed a corner of the counterculture movement at Harvard, Boston, and beyond. Gorey was prolific – over the course of his career, he illustrated over 200 book covers, wrote and illustrated over 100 books, stories, and unclassifiable “works,” and won a Tony Award for Costume Design in the 1977 Broadway revival of Dracula, among other accomplishments.

Amphigorey Too was published as a follow-up to Amphigorey, the first collection of Gorey’s works. It anthologizes 20 Gorey stories that may be difficult to find or buy individually, including such gems as “The Beastly Baby,” “The Nursery Frieze,” “The Pious Infant,” “The Inanimate Tragedy,” “The Gilded Bat,” and more. Gorey’s signature style is on full display – Victorian, gothic, surrealist, absurd, and darkly funny. The combination of these elements leaves a reader unsettled, with a vague sense of the macabre, rendered whimsical with biting humor.

Gorey’s status as “cult classic” is a big factor in determining the value of this first edition, signed copy of Amphigorey Too – those who followed him followed him fervently, and consider his signature something to cherish. A Gorey book contains not only his one-of-a-kind words and illustrations, but also his personal flair, his refusal to define himself as a certain type of artist and person. Much as his work steered clear of categorization, Gorey himself defied binaries of sexuality and traditional notions of masculinity. His friends – including, notably, his roommate Frank O’Hara, who would go on to be a celebrated member of the New York School of poets – were mostly outwardly gay, and Gorey held himself with an exuberant, eccentric air, dressing flamboyantly in oversized fur coats, scarves, sneakers, and heavy rings. But despite copious speculation on his sexuality, Gorey never explicitly labeled himself, leaning instead towards answers such as this (printed in the September 1980 edition of Boston magazine): “What I am trying to say is that I’m a person before I’m anything else.” (If you want to read more about Gorey, O’Hara, and their participation in queer culture, we highly recommend the LitHub article “Edward Gorey, Frank O’Hara and Harvard’s Gay Underground” by Mark Dery.)

Gorey’s lasting influence shows in works influenced by his style, including Daniel Handler (Lemony Snicket’s) children’s books, A Series of Unfortunate Events, and the music video for the Nine Inch Nails song “The Perfect Drug,” which was designed to contain Goreyesque set elements and costuming. When Gorey died in 2000, he left much of his estate to a charitable trust that benefitted cats, dogs, bats, insects, and other such creatures, and he left his one-of-a-kind books to a following of readers eager to see the world through Gorey’s strange point of view. This signed first edition of Amphigorey Too is a celebration of art, counterculture, and uniqueness. If you love Gorey like we do, come by the store to take a look at this and 10+ other signed works in our collection!