P. L. (Peter Lund) Simmonds

Peter Lund Simmonds was a 19th-century journalist and author whose writing ranged across commerce, agriculture, natural products, and food. Reliable catalog and author records identify him as living from 1814 to 1897, and describe him as a journalist as well as the founder of Simmonds's Colonial Magazine and Foreign Miscellany.

He is especially remembered today for The Curiosities of Food, a book first published in 1859 that explores unusual foods and eating habits from different parts of the world. Other surviving public-domain editions of his work show the same wide interests, including books on vegetable products and on coffee and chicory.

That mix of practical knowledge and wide-ranging curiosity gives his writing its appeal. Even when his subject is trade or agriculture, he has a knack for making it feel like a tour through the facts, fashions, and fascinations of Victorian life.