John H. Pollack
John H. Pollack is Curator, Research Services, in the Kislak Center for Special Collections, Rare Books and Manuscripts at the University of Pennsylvania Libraries. He has worked in this department since 1995. His responsibilities include providing assistance to students and scholars, and teaching and organizing class sessions centered on the collections. He is also responsible for the Furness Shakespeare Library, which is part of the Kislak Center.
John holds a PhD in English from Penn and a BA from Washington University in St. Louis. He specializes in Early American literature and history, and early modern book history. His research has focused on topics including Native American languages; colonial writings from New France; and Benjamin Franklin and colonial education.
It is generally agreed that the modern restaurant had its beginnings in Paris in the mid to late 18th century. Among these early restaurateurs was Antoine Beauvilliers, who ran a renowned restaurant in the years prior to and following the French Revolution. This talk will explore the early history of restaurants and showcase materials relating to Beauvilliers’ restaurant and its celebrity chef, including a rare surviving 1802 menu, his two-volume 1814 cookbook, and an 1803 sketch of the experience of eating a meal at the restaurant by an Englishman who frequented it both pre- and post- Revolution.
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