author
Cecilia Maria de Candia Pearse
1853–1926
Born into the glamorous world of nineteenth-century opera, she became a writer in her own right, drawing on music, family history, gardening, and life among Europe’s artistic circles. Her best-known book, a memoir of her father, preserves a vivid portrait of the celebrated tenor Mario.
1 Audiobook
The kitchen garden and the cook : An alphabetical guide to the cultivation of vegetables with recipes for cooking them
by Cecilia Maria de Candia Pearse
About the author
Cecilia Maria de Candia was born in Brighton on December 24, 1853, to the famous opera singers Giulia Grisi and Giovanni Matteo de Candia, known professionally as Mario. She spent her childhood between Florence, Paris, and London, surrounded by musicians, artists, royalty, and other figures of European high society. She later married Godfrey Pearse in 1872, and the couple divorced in 1889.
Writing under her own name and as Mrs Godfrey Pearse, she published The Romance of a Great Singer: A Memoir of Mario in 1910 with Frank Hird. She also wrote The Kitchen Garden and the Cook (1913), an alphabetical guide to growing vegetables, and The Enchanted Past (1926), blending her interests in history, nature, and the world she had known.
De Candia remained connected to the literary and artistic circles of her time, including the painter James McNeill Whistler. She died in Bordighera, Italy, on May 26, 1926.