Arthur Gray (1852-1940). The Little Tea Book. (New York: Baker and Taylor, 1903.)

Being as I am a tea devotee, I want to put a few public domain books about tea on this site. Alas, very few books about the delights of tea were written in the years before 1923. The few that do exist are mostly technical books about growing and harvesting the tea plant.

This book is one of the exceptions. It is a brief but charming treatise on "the cup that cheers but not inebriates" and the people who love it. Unfortunately, at times it totters over into pure Victorian sentimentalism, which is one of my least favorite states of being. However, on the whole it is clever, interesting, and worth wasting some time over, preferably while sipping a nice cup of Earl Grey.

Read The Little Tea Book here