The Long, Honourable History of Coffee in Literature

My thanks to Henry Wessells for providing much of the source material for this blog entry.

Given the important role coffee has played throughout history, I thought it might be interesting to explore how coffee has been portrayed in the world of literature.

It is only natural that coffee played its first significant role in the works of Muslim writers, since the Middle East was exposed to Qahwa (coffee) much sooner than was the case in Europe. In 1587, the writer Abd al-Qadir al-Jaziri put together a work tracing the history and legal controversies of coffee. He described in some detail the fact that a sheik called Jamal-al-Din was first to use coffee on a regular basis. This was around the year 1454. Al-Jazri also reported that Sufi wise men had taken to coffee because of its usefulness in driving away sleep.

Early mentions of coffee can be found in the works of Francis Bacon and Burton's Anatomy of Melancholy. In 1671, a Frenchman named Philippe Dufour published in Lyons De l'Usage du Cafe, du The et du Chocolat.

The 18th century was the heyday of the London coffee house scene. These establishments were described in some detail by such men as Addison (writing for the Spectator), Steele (writing for the Tatler) and MacKay in the book Journey Through England.

Legend has it that Voltaire drank 50 cups of coffee a day (enough to lead to serious illness if not death). Balzac was also an avid coffee drinker. It is said that coffee could have hastened his death (the idea was so prevalent that a modern-day coffee roaster in Philadelphia named one of its blends La Mort de Balzac. Balzac also composed an essay called A Treatise on Modern Stimulants, in which coffee was linked to the development of ideas.

In The Long Goodbye, written by Raymond Chandler, the detective Philip Marlowe describes in detail the process of making coffee in his kitchen just before driving his friend Terry to the airport. According to Wessells, this is but one instance in which coffee is featured in Chandler's novels.

And of course, we must not forget one of the most famous literary titles that feature coffee: Coffee, Tea or Me? in which the sexual misadventures of two stewardesses are described with the help of a well known ghost writer named Donald Bain. I have personally never read the book, but the line is so famous that it seems almost unnecessary to do so.