«Exquisite foie gras! Have I forgotten thee??» Edward Bulwer's «Pelham» and the gastronomic fad

In line with the sustained critical interest in early nineteenth-century discourses of consumption, my article explores the literary fallout of the gastronomic fad, focusing on the representation of food and wine consumption and connoisseurship in Edward Bulwer’s Pelham (1828). Starting from the novel’s biographical and cultural contexts, I survey the dandy gourmand’s special brand of wit, his voluptuous imaginary and the aggressively normative element in gastronomic literature, eventually to tackle the narrative role of Lord Guloseton, as Pelham’s epicurean double. In so doing I underscore the contradictory injunctions (to excess and restraint) that crisscross gastronomic literature, as well as the affinity between the gastronome and the dandy.