Samuel Chamberlain

American, 1896 - 1975

Samuel Chamberlain was an impressively prolific writer and graphic artist, with some dozens of titles to his name. At Gourmet magazine, he wrote the Clémentine column under the name Phineas Beck, a nom de plume he based on a French term for a gourmand, bec fin. Chamberlain attended the School of Architecture at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology and lived for many years in Marblehead, Massachusetts, where he did indeed introduce Clémentine of the famous column to the not-so-glorious challenges of American canned goods and supermarket produce.