Cooking with Mud

Mess is age-old and universal, as phenomenon and as topic. The evidence collected in this book suggests, however, that the second half of the nineteenth century saw the first stirrings in Western culture of a primary interest in mess for its own sake. Messes, like modern identities, happen by accident; their representation in painting and fictionfrom Turner to Degas, and from Melville to Maupassant and the New Woman writers made it possible to think boldly and inventively about chance.