Wilson, Mary Tolford

Mary Tolford Wilson (1899–1998) is known for her scholarly work in culinary history. Her admirable essay “The First American Cookbook” served as the introduction to a 1958 facsimile edition of American Cookery (1796) by Amelia Simmons; the essay stands as a model study of culinary Americana. Later Wilson wrote a scholarly account concerning The Pocumtuc Housewife (1897), which was falsely claimed by the publisher to have originally been published in 1805, giving rise to numerous phantom citings of a spurious work in certain august lexicons.