author
Clarence E. (Clarence Edgar) Edwords
1856–1941
A lively chronicler of nature and city life, this American writer moved from frontier-style field adventures to the restaurant culture of early San Francisco. His best-known work captures the tastes, stories, and social world behind the city’s dining scene in the years after 1906.
1 Audiobook
Bohemian San Francisco Its restaurants and their most famous recipes—The elegant art of dining.
by Clarence E. (Clarence Edgar) Edwords
About the author
Born in 1856, Clarence Edgar Edwords was an American writer whose books ranged across very different subjects. Records for his published works connect him with Camp-fires of a Naturalist (1893), drawn from the field notes of zoologist Lewis Lindsay Dyche, and later with California-themed writing including Bohemian San Francisco (1914).
What makes Edwords memorable is that unusual mix of interests. In one phase of his career, he wrote about expeditions after North American mammals; in another, he turned to the character of San Francisco itself, describing restaurants, cooking, and the pleasures of dining with an eye for local color.
Today he is best remembered for Bohemian San Francisco, a vivid snapshot of the city’s food culture and social life in the early twentieth century. Even where biographical details are sparse, his writing still offers a clear sense of curiosity, appetite, and affection for the worlds he described.