Tea, Coffee and Chocolate: How We Fell in Love with Caffeine

King, Melanie

ISBN 10: 1851244069 / ISBN 13: 9781851244065

Published by The Bodleian Library, 2015

About this Item

Dispatched, from the UK, within 48 hours of ordering. Though second-hand, the book is still in very good shape. Minimal signs of usage may include very minor creasing on the cover or on the spine.

Seller Inventory # CHL2045560

Bibliographic Details

• Title: Tea, Coffee and Chocolate: How We Fell in Love with Caffeine
• Publisher: The Bodleian Library
• Publication Date: 2015
• Language: English
• ISBN 10: 1851244069
• ISBN 13: 9781851244065
• Binding: Hardcover
• Condition: Used; Very Good

About this title

Synopsis

Did you know that coffee was recommended as protection against the bubonic plague in the seventeenth century? Or that tea was believed to make men ‘unfit to do their business’ and blamed for women becoming unattractive? On the other hand, a cup of chocolate was supposed to have exactly the opposite effect on the drinker’s sex life and physical appearance.

These three beverages arrived in England in the 1650s from faraway, exotic places: tea from China, coffee from the Middle East and chocolate from Mesoamerica. Physicians, diarists and politicians were quick to comment on their supposed benefits and alleged harmfulness, using newspapers, pamphlets and handbills both to promote and denounce their sudden popularity. Others seized the opportunity to serve the growing appetite for these newly discovered drinks by setting up coffee houses or encouraging one-upmanship in increasingly elaborate tea-drinking rituals.

How did the rowdy and often comical initial reception of these drinks form the roots of today’s enduring caffeine culture? From the tale of the goatherd whose animals became frisky on coffee berries to a duchess with a goblet of poisoned chocolate, this book, illustrated with eighteenth-century satirical cartoons and early advertisements, tells the extraordinary story of our favourite hot drinks.

About the Author

Melanie King is the author of 'Secrets in a Dead Fish' (Bodleian Library Publishing, 2014), 'Can Onions Cure Earache? Medical Advice from 1769' (Bodleian Library Publishing, 2012) and 'The Dying Game: A Curious History of Death' (Oneworld Publications, 2008).