Five quick questions with Annabel Abbs
‘I’m on a personal mission to return some of history’s many lost women.’
You write popular historical fiction. What do you love about it?
I love doing research (anything really), but historical research is a particular passion. We’re shaped by the past. We carry the vestiges of our ancestors in our DNA — their likes and dislikes, their hopes and fears. Historical research reconnects us to this, helping us understand who we are, what matters to us and why we’re here.
What drew you to write specifically about Eliza Acton, author of the first cookbook with recipes?
I’ve always loved cooking. In fact I love everything about food — growing it, buying it, eating it. But it’s not a subject that’s often covered in fiction. Most great food writing is, in my opinion, non-fiction. So I was really writing the book that I wanted to read. But I also prefer to write about real women — I’m on a personal mission to return some of history’s many lost women. I’d inherited a collection of antiquarian cookbooks from my mother-in-law who had been a cookery teacher in the 1950s, and in her collection I found several female cookery writers who had been enormously successful in the 18th and 19th centuries. Many published anonymously, but not Eliza Acton, who invented the recipe as we know it and was a bestseller for 60 years. Before her book Modern Cookery for Private Families, recipes were a long list of instructions written very plainly without much detail for professional cooks. Acton wrote for the middle-class woman with a family to feed. But she also wrote beautifully — her recipes make you want to cook them. This wasn’t enough to make a pageturning novel but, when I researched her life in detail, I discovered that she had a compelling backstory — a failed career as a poet, thwarted love, bankruptcy, recipe theft and more.
What is your favourite Eliza Acton dish?
I’ve been cooking her recipes for four years now, working my way through her 600-page recipe book. Her soups, stews, puddings and cakes are excellent. I’m particularly fond of her apple and ginger soup, her Acton gingerbread, her madeira cake and her mincemeat — which my mother used to make every year.
You are a walker. Tell us about it.
For me, walking is much more than exercise. It’s where I reflect, think, plan and prepare. I start every day with a walk where I plan my work but I also finish most days with a walk, where I switch off and focus on what’s around me. All my holidays tend to be walks too — long trails that go on for days. I’m really happiest in walking boots.
What’s the connection between walking and feminist artists like Simone de Beauvoir and Georgia O’keeffe, who you have written about?
I believe that the time we spend walking, especially when alone in more remote landscapes, is vital for contemplation and creativity, but also a powerful means of emboldening ourselves. Beauvoir and O’keeffe and the other women I cover in Windswept: Why Women Walk seemed to find their own voices and a sense of independence and inner strength by walking in the mountains (de Beauvoir) or on the plains (O’keeffe). I’ve experienced the same, walking beside rivers and over hills. Everyone should try a long hike.