Margaret Visser (born May 11, 1940) is a Canadian writer and broadcaster who lives in Toronto, Paris, and South West France. Her subject matter is the history, anthropology, and mythology of everyday life.
Visser is married to Colin Visser, professor emeritus of the English Department of the University of Toronto.
In 2017, Visser's 1992 book, The Rituals of Dinner was re-issued, on her birthday, and The Guardian's review of it noted her wry humour.[2] The review noted "Twenty-five years after its first publication, Visser’s book remains a delightful guide to how we eat, and why it matters."
In 2018, the Washington Post cited Visser, on the etiquette of cannibalism, from her 1992 book on dining manners, The Rituals of Dinner, when reporting on the bizarre case of a California high school girl who claimed she served her classmates cookies that contained her grandfather's ashes.[3]
In September, 2019, Visser was one of the experts interviewed for a documentary on what recent archeological discoveries say about Mayan dining habits.[4]
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Maura Judkis (2018-10-18). "A teen allegedly baked her grandfather's ashes into cookies — and fed them to classmates". Washington Post. Retrieved 2019-09-19. If the girl who baked her grandfather into the cookies ate one, this would make her an endocannibal — someone who eats the remains of a relative or fellow tribesperson. According to Margaret Visser's book "The Rituals of Dinner: The Origins, Evolution, Eccentricities and Meaning of Table Manners," endocannabalism has been practiced by ancient tribes throughout history, who "can, and indeed must, 'take in' the life essence of a dead fellow tribesman by eating him after he has died a natural death.
