Rare Books

"A La Carte: The Gourmet's Phantasmagoria" 1948 BERGER, Oscar (M.F.K. Fisher's Inscribed Copy!) (SOLD)

In Fifty Cartoons

M.F.K. Fisher's copy with inscription by her husband Donald Friede and with short autograph note by M.F.K.F

BERGER, Oscar

[63] pp.

E.P. Dutton & Co., Inc.

1948

First Edition

9 3/4"x 6 3/4"

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Imagine your Crepes Suzette served by ballerina, or your Frogs Legs appetizer garnished with top hat and monocle. That is how Oscar Berger (1901-1997) would have served you, if he had been a restauranteur and not an artist! Born in the former Czechoslovakia, Berger won a scholarship to the Berlin Art School in 1920 and went on to work as a staff artist at Berlin’s largest daily newspaper. Forced to flee the country after his political cartoons upset Hitler, he lived in Prague, Budapest, Paris, and London before settling in the United States. He became known as a kind of roving visual journalist, and was so esteemed that numerous celebrities (Roosevelt, Churchill, Garbo, Chaplin, Dietrich, and King Victor Emmanuel, among others) sought him out to draw their caricatures. This 1st edition (1948) collection of cartoon culinary puns showcases Berger’s distinctively theatrical, fluid style and is a testament to the survival of his playful spirit after years of displacement and immigration.