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‘Exhilarating to read – thoughtful, heart-warming and poignant, with a quiet intelligence and elegance that does its heroine proud’ Bridget Collins
Two women
Ten years
A recipe for success
Eliza Acton, despite never having boiled an egg, became one of the world’s most successful food writers, revolutionizing cooking and cookbooks around the world. Her story is fascinating, joyful and truly inspiring.
The award-winning author of The Joyce Girl seamlessly intertwines recipes and meticulously researched history, serving up the most thought-provoking and page-turning historical novel you’ll read this year. Explore the enduring struggle for women’s freedom, the exhilarating power of friendship, and the creative joy of cooking, through the life of Eliza Acton – finally out of the archives and into the public eye.
England, 1835. Eliza Acton dreams of becoming a poet, but when she takes her new manuscript to a publisher, she’s told that ‘poetry is not the business of a lady’. Instead, he demands a cookery book.
Eliza is hesitant but when her bankrupt father is forced to flee the country, she has no choice but to comply.
Although she has never cooked before, she is determined to learn and to bring her skills as a poet to the craft of recipe writing. She hires young, impoverished Ann Kirby as her assistant and, before long, the two women develop a radical friendship crossing the divides of age and class. Together, Eliza and Ann break the mould of traditional cookbooks, changing the course of food writing forever. But in the process of doing so, their friendship is pushed to its very limits.
From the Publisher
Publisher : Simon & Schuster UK
Publication date : 2 Mar. 2023
Language : English
Print length : 416 pages
ISBN-10 : 1398502251
ISBN-13 : 978-1398502253
Item weight : 1.05 kg
Dimensions : 13 x 2.5 x 19.8 cm
Best Sellers Rank: 165,086 in Books (See Top 100 in Books) 79 in British Food & Drink 154 in Biographies on Novelist & Playwrights 164 in Biographical & Autofiction
Customer reviews: 4.4 4.4 out of 5 stars 667 ratings var dpAcrHasRegisteredArcLinkClickAction; P.when(‘A’, ‘ready’).execute(function(A) { if (dpAcrHasRegisteredArcLinkClickAction !== true) { dpAcrHasRegisteredArcLinkClickAction = true; A.declarative( ‘acrLink-click-metrics’, ‘click’, { “allowLinkDefault”: true }, function (event) { if (window.ue) { ue.count(“acrLinkClickCount”, (ue.count(“acrLinkClickCount”) || 0) + 1); } } ); } }); P.when(‘A’, ‘cf’).execute(function(A) { A.declarative(‘acrStarsLink-click-metrics’, ‘click’, { “allowLinkDefault” : true }, function(event){ if(window.ue) { ue.count(“acrStarsLinkWithPopoverClickCount”, (ue.count(“acrStarsLinkWithPopoverClickCount”) || 0) + 1); } }); });
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