M.S. Lovell and Edible British Molluscs

One of the curiosities of gastronomical literature is the book called Edible British Molluscs of Great Britain and Ireland with Recipes for Cooking Them, by M. S. Lovell (1867. second edition 1881). No-one knows who M S. Lovell was. The book is scarce, and the Scolar Press were thinking of doing a facsimile reprint of it in the mid 1970s. This never came to pass, but before the project was abandoned John Barrett wrote, in 1977, an interesting introduction to the book, of which the greater part (by kind permission of himself and the Scolar Press) is reproduced below. This essay has not been published elsewhere; and we hope that it will serve not only to interest readers but also to evoke any clues which may exist to Lovell's identity. We start with John Barrett's remarks on this last point .