Description
Book SynopsisAfternoon Tea: A History explores the development of the afternoon tea meal, diving deeper than the popular tale of the Duchess of Bedford's afternoon gatherings to find the meals that inspired those early afternoon teas. Julia Skinner carefully separates the fact and lore around the meal and sets the story of afternoon tea within its historic contexts. Recognizing that a meal's birth and life never happen in a vacuum, the book sets aside the already well-documented conversations surrounding tea etiquette, instead exploring the social contexts that made the meal possible and popular, moving it from one small subset of the population to a widespread and beloved phenomenon, one that nearly died out at the end of the 20th century before experiencing a resurgence in the 21st. Afternoon tea is a meal that came of age during the British Empire's most aggressive expansion, and as such became a meal that was transported to new continents with colonial forces. The book explores how this movemen
Trade ReviewUnder its appealing cookbook cover, this volume by food writer Skinner is a sociocultural history of afternoon tea—as an established Western meal and a social performance—in the wake of the previous books in the "Meals" series, such as Barbecue (CH, Mar'15, 52-3628) or Brunch (CH, Jan'15, 52-2619). Skinner debunks widely held anecdotes about the tradition's invention and its etiquette and codification. . . . The author underlines how changeable the custom has been—as well as the ways in which its gendered origin as a private social gathering for women, its intersections with national identity, and its class perceptions were responsible for its waxing and waning popularity. * CHOICE *
Table of ContentsIntroduction Chapter One: A Tradition is Born Chapter Two: The Empire and the Teacup Chapter Three: Afternoon tea in the postcolonial world Chapter Four: The present and future of afternoon tea Conclusion
