Author of The Count of Monte Cristo and The Three Musketeers, Alexandre Dumas (1802-1870) was a prolific writer who also wrote plays, short stories, published essays, magazine articles and reportage. In addition to this he was an expert cook and great traveller, whose cosmopolitan outlook is reflected in The Great Dictionary of Cuisine, first published posthumously in 1873.


Alan Davidson (1924 - 2003) was a distinguished author and publisher, and one of the world's best-known writers on fish. In 1999 he compiled the immensely successful Companion to Food, available in Penguin. Alan and his wife, Jane's (1927-2010) translation of Dumas's Le Grand Dictionnaire de Cuisine was first published by the Folio Society.