author

Antonia Isola

b. 1876

Best known for a small but influential cookbook, this American writer helped introduce Italian home cooking to U.S. readers in the early 1900s. Her book Simple Italian Cookery is widely noted as the first Italian cookbook published in the United States.

1 Audiobook

Simple Italian Cookery

Simple Italian Cookery

by Antonia Isola

About the author

Born Mabel Earl McGinnis on May 16, 1876, she wrote under the pen name Antonia Isola. Sources describe her as a New Yorker who had lived in Rome for several years, giving her firsthand familiarity with Italian food.

Her best-known work, Simple Italian Cookery, was published by Harper & Brothers in 1912. It is commonly described as the first Italian cookbook published in the United States, and it remains the work for which she is remembered.

Publishers are said to have chosen the name "Antonia Isola" to give the book an Italian air. Later in life, she married writer and diplomat Norval Richardson in 1917.