Hannah Wolley
Little is known about the English culinary authoress Hannah Wolley. Even
her dates of birth and death are unknown. She was
born perhaps circa 1622 and died in or after 1674. Her last name is spelled variously
as Wolley, Woolly, Woolley, Wooley, etc. According to the Oxford Dictionary
of National Biography, her “other married name was Challiner.” What we do
know is she is the first credited woman authoress of a cookery book in England!
She is the direct contemporary of the far better known Robert May and Sir
Kenelm Digby. She published more works and was famous enough to even have works
attributed to her, yet, she is little known today. That deserves to change.
Several of her works are now available today through EEBO Editions. Look for
them on Amazon.
Her works are:
The
Ladies Directory
(July 1661 at her own expense and 1662),
The
Cooks Guide
(1664),
The
Queen-like Closet
(1670, 1672, 1675-6, 1681, 1684),
The
Ladies Delight
(1672),
A
Supplement To The Queen-like Closet (1674, 1681, 1684),
She is often credited as being the author of
The
Gentlewomans Companion
The
Compleat Servant-Maid
(1677)
The
Accomplish'd Ladies Delight (1675).
A recipe from The Cook's Guide: or, Rare Receipts for Cookery, 1664, shows her typical instruction for boiling a syrup to Candy height.
To candy Oranges or Lemmons after they are preserved.
TAke them out of the syrrop and drain them well, then boile some sugar to a Candy height, and lay your pills in the bottom of a five, and pour your hot sugar over them; then dry them in a stove or warme oven. [p 97]
For more information on Hannah Wolley,
See
See
Lehman,
Gilly, The British Housewife. Totnes, UK: Prospect Books, 2003.
Hobby,
Elaine. Virtue of Necessity: English
Women's Writing, 1646-1688. London: Virago Press, 1988.
John
Considine, ‘Wolley , Hannah (b. 1622?, d. in or after 1674)’, Oxford Dictionary of National Biography,
Oxford University Press, 2004.
Ellison,
Katherine. “Introduction to The
Gentlewomans Companion.” Emory Women Writers Resource Project Collections.
1999.
http://womenwriters.library.emory.edu/essay.php?level=div&id=gc_complete_000
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