Calendar of Events
Note: Meetings are usually held on the second Sunday of each month, September through May, from 2:00 to 4:00 p.m. Currently we are meeting via Zoom, but in-person meetings are held at the Bethesda-Chevy Chase Services Center, 4805 Edgemoor Lane, Bethesda, Maryland, and occasionally at other venues. The meetings are open to anyone. However, certain meetings may require a fee.
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The Lives and Cookbooks of Three Nineteenth-Century Women
The Authors
Keith Stavely and Kathleen Fitzgerald are co-authors of three books on New England and American food history—America’s Founding Food (University of North Carolina Press, 2004; pbk. 2015), Northern Hospitality (University of Massachusetts Press, 2011), and United Tastes (University of Massachusetts Press, 2017). Their collaboration, which also includes scholarly articles, extensive public speaking, and media work, grew out of their deep engagement with New England history.
Stavely, a former English professor and retired library director, is a recognized scholar of English and American Puritanism. Fitzgerald trained in English literature and theology, worked as a college chaplain and soup kitchen administrator, and is also a retired library director.
Their culinary histories emphasize how New England foodways reflected and shaped regional development, highlighting themes such as settler/Indigenous relations (America’s Founding Food), the consumer revolution of the eighteenth century (Northern Hospitality), and the competition for national leadership in the early republic (United Tastes).Their current project involves researching and re-creating the classics of the New England baking tradition–ensuring they are never without a pie in the house!
The couple lives in Jamestown, Rhode Island; their blog about traditional New England cooking in a modern kitchen is at StavelyandFitzgerald.com.
The Talk: The Lives and Cookbooks of Three Nineteenth-Century Women
Three nineteenth-century New England cookbook authors—Mrs. A. L. Webster, “Mrs. Bliss of Boston,” and Mrs. S. G. Knight—have begun to attract attention from modern historians and culinary writers. But until now nothing was known of their lives.
In the course of their research on the New England baking tradition, Keith Stavely and Kathleen Fitzgerald uncovered definitive information about Webster and Knight, and gathered persuasive evidence pointing to the identity of Bliss. In their talk, they will retrace the steps leading to the “eureka” moments that brought the lives of these once-anonymous women to light.
They will also place Webster, Bliss and Knight’s cookbooks in their social and cultural setting. The 1840s, ‘50s, and ‘60s were decades of change in American life, when enthusiasm for industrial progress and new inventions was shadowed by the looming Civil War. Webster and Bliss embraced the era’s gastronomic sophistication—Bliss with a distinctly Francophile flair—while Knight championed a simpler, though still ample, style of cooking, making her Tit-Bits a worthy successor to Lydia Maria Child’s American Frugal Housewife.