author
Robert O. Fielding
Best known for a compact early-20th-century guide to the spice trade, this little-known writer turned practical grocery knowledge into lively reading. His work opens a window onto how merchants once learned about the origins, quality, and uses of everyday spices.
1 Audiobook
Spices, Their Histories: Valuable Information for Grocers
by Robert O. Fielding
About the author
Robert O. Fielding is known for Spices, Their Histories: Valuable Information for Grocers, a short reference work published in Seattle in 1910 by The Trade Register, Inc. The book presents him as a member of the magazine's staff and explains that its chapters first appeared in that trade journal before being gathered into book form.
Rather than writing literary fiction, he wrote practical nonfiction for the grocery trade. Spices, Their Histories guides readers through products such as allspice, cinnamon, cloves, ginger, mustard, nutmeg, pepper, and cumin, mixing background, sourcing information, and selling knowledge for working grocers.
Very little firmly confirmed biographical information about Fielding appears to be widely available online, so he remains a somewhat shadowy figure behind a very specific and useful book. That modest obscurity is part of the charm: his surviving work offers a direct glimpse into everyday food commerce in the early 1900s.