Elizabeth Robins Pennell (February 21, 1855 – February 7, 1936) was an American writer who, for most of her adult life, made her home in London. A recent researcher summed her up as "an adventurous, accomplished, self-assured, well-known columnist, biographer, cookbook collector, and art critic"; in addition, she wrote travelogues, mainly of European cycling voyages, and memoirs, centred on her London salon. Her biographies included the first in almost a century of the proto-feminist

Mary Wollstonecraft Mary Wollstonecraft (, ; 27 April 1759 – 10 September 1797) was a British writer, philosopher, and advocate of women's rights. Until the late 20th century, Wollstonecraft's life, which encompassed several unconventional personal relationsh ...

, one of her uncle the folklorist

Charles Godfrey Leland Charles Godfrey Leland (August 15, 1824 – March 20, 1903) was an American humorist and folklorist, born in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania. He was educated at Princeton University and in Europe. Leland worked in journalism, travelled extensi ...

, and one of her friend the painter Whistler. In recent years, her art criticism has come under scrutiny, and her food criticism has been reprinted.

Early life

She grew up in

Philadelphia Philadelphia, often called Philly, is the largest city in the Commonwealth of Pennsylvania, the sixth-largest city in the U.S., the second-largest city in both the Northeast megalopolis and Mid-Atlantic regions after New York City. Since ...

. Her mother died when she was very young, and she was sent away to a convent school from the ages of 8 to 17. When she returned to her father's home, he had remarried, and she was bored with the demands and restrictions of being a proper Catholic young lady. She wanted to work, and, with the encouragement of her uncle, the writer and folklorist

, she took up writing as a career. She started with articles in periodicals such as ''

Atlantic Monthly ''The Atlantic'' is an American magazine and multi-platform publisher. It features articles in the fields of politics, foreign affairs, business and the economy, culture and the arts, technology, and science. It was founded in 1857 in Boston, ...

'', and through this work she met a young Quaker artist named Joseph Pennell, who had also had to face down parental disapproval to pursue his creative calling. This began a fruitful collaboration between writer and illustrator.

First book, marriage, move to London

Mary Wollstonecraft - Elizabeth Robins Pennell - Cover

Her first book was the first full-length biography of

(1759–97) since the hastily published ''

Memoirs of the Author of A Vindication of the Rights of Woman ''Memoirs of the Author of A Vindication of the Rights of Woman'' (1798) is William Godwin's biography of his late wife Mary Wollstonecraft. Rarely published in the nineteenth century and sparingly even today, ''Memoirs'' is most often viewed ...

'' by her widower

William Godwin William Godwin (3 March 1756 – 7 April 1836) was an English journalist, political philosophy, political philosopher and novelist. He is considered one of the first exponents of utilitarianism and the first modern proponent of anarchism. God ...

. Pennell's biography drew on three main sources: Godwin's ''Memoirs''; a London publisher named

Charles Kegan Paul Charles Kegan Paul (8 March 1828 – 19 July 1902) was an English clergyman, publisher and author. He began his adult life as a clergyman of the Church of England, and served the Church for more than 20 years. His religious orientation moved ...

, who had written a sketch about the husband and wife a few years previously; and a curator at the

British Library The British Library is the national library of the United Kingdom and is one of the largest libraries in the world. It is estimated to contain between 170 and 200 million items from many countries. As a legal deposit library, the Briti ...

, Richard Garnett. It was published in 1884 by the Roberts Brothers of Boston, as one of the first in their Famous Women series, and also in London by the Walter Scott Publishing Company. In June that year, Elizabeth Robins married Joseph Pennell. The couple accepted a travel writing commission from '' The Century Magazine'' and set off for Europe, making several cycling journeys, in 1884 from London to Canterbury and then in 1885 through France. Her uncle had travelled widely in Europe and settled in London, and so did the Pennells, basing themselves in the British capital for more than thirty years, with frequent visits to the Continent. They made a good working team, producing many articles and books together, and supporting each other in their work. For many years they opened their home on Thursday evenings as a literary and artistic salon; some of the people who enjoyed their hospitality included: "critics Sir

Edmund Gosse Sir Edmund William Gosse (; 21 September 184916 May 1928) was an English poet, author and critic. He was strictly brought up in a small Protestant sect, the Plymouth Brethren, but broke away sharply from that faith. His account of his childhoo ...

and William Archer; artists

Aubrey Beardsley Aubrey Vincent Beardsley (21 August 187216 March 1898) was an English illustrator and author. His black ink drawings were influenced by Japanese woodcuts, and depicted the grotesque, the decadent, and the erotic. He was a leading figure in the ...

and

James McNeill Whistler James Abbott McNeill Whistler (; July 10, 1834July 17, 1903) was an American painter active during the American Gilded Age and based primarily in the United Kingdom. He eschewed sentimentality and moral allusion in painting and was a leading pr ...

; authors

Henry James Henry James ( – ) was an American-British author. He is regarded as a key transitional figure between literary realism and literary modernism, and is considered by many to be among the greatest novelists in the English language. He was the ...

Max Beerbohm Sir Henry Maximilian Beerbohm (24 August 1872 – 20 May 1956) was an English essayist, Parody, parodist and Caricature, caricaturist under the signature Max. He first became known in the 1890s as a dandy and a humorist. He was the drama critic ...

Oscar Wilde Oscar Fingal O'Flahertie Wills Wilde (16 October 185430 November 1900) was an Irish poet and playwright. After writing in different forms throughout the 1880s, he became one of the most popular playwrights in London in the early 1890s. He is ...

, and

George Bernard Shaw George Bernard Shaw (26 July 1856 – 2 November 1950), known at his insistence simply as Bernard Shaw, was an Irish playwright, critic, polemicist and political activist. His influence on Western theatre, culture and politics extended from ...

; and publishers John Lane and William E. Henley." Pennell wrote of these gatherings in her memoirs, ''Our House and the People in It'' (1910), ''Our House and London Out of Our Windows'' (1912), and ''Nights: Rome & Venice in the Aesthetic Eighties, London & Paris in the Fighting Nineties'' (1916).

Her works and their appraisal

Art criticism

Pennell's main work was as an art and, later, a food critic, writing for periodicals including the '' Daily Chronicle'' and the '' Pall Mall Gazette''. Scholar Meaghan Clarke ties "real-life women art journalists" such as Pennell to the literary figures and hacks that populate

George Gissing George Robert Gissing (; 22 November 1857 – 28 December 1903) was an English novelist, who published 23 novels between 1880 and 1903. His best-known works have reappeared in modern editions. They include '' The Nether World'' (1889), ''New Gru ...

's ''

New Grub Street ''New Grub Street'' is a novel by George Gissing published in 1891, which is set in the literary and journalistic circles of 1880s London. Gissing revised and shortened the novel for a French edition of 1901. Plot The story deals with the lite ...

'', as well as to the concept of the

New Woman The New Woman was a feminist ideal that emerged in the late 19th century and had a profound influence well into the 20th century. In 1894, Irish writer Sarah Grand (1854–1943) used the term "new woman" in an influential article, to refer to ...

. "Like journalism and, one might argue, because of journalism, the London art world was undergoing an intensive popularization during the 1880s and 1890s." Keeping up (as Clarke puts it) "a peripatetic pace in search of copy", Pennell went to Paris in May for the art salons, and regularly visited the London galleries (from

Cork Street Cork Street is a street in Mayfair in the West End of London, England, with many contemporary art galleries, and was previously associated with the tailoring industry. It is part of the Burlington Estate, which was developed from the 18th centu ...

and

Bond Street Bond Street in the West End of London links Piccadilly in the south to Oxford Street in the north. Since the 18th century the street has housed many prestigious and upmarket fashion retailers. The southern section is Old Bond Street and the ...

in the fashionable West End to philanthropic art projects in the slums of the

East End The East End of London, often referred to within the London area simply as the East End, is the historic core of wider East London, east of the Roman and medieval walls of the City of London and north of the River Thames. It does not have uni ...

) to review the exhibitions. She wrote critically of

Walter Besant Sir Walter Besant (14 August 1836 – 9 June 1901) was an English novelist and historian. William Henry Besant was his brother, and another brother, Frank, was the husband of Annie Besant. Early life and education The son of wine merchant Willi ...

’s People’s Palace at Mile End (similar in spirit to

Samuel Samuel ''Šəmūʾēl'', Tiberian: ''Šămūʾēl''; ar, شموئيل or صموئيل '; el, Σαμουήλ ''Samouḗl''; la, Samūēl is a figure who, in the narratives of the Hebrew Bible, plays a key role in the transition from the bib ...

and

Henrietta Barnett Dame Henrietta Octavia Weston Barnett, DBE (''née'' Rowland; 4 May 1851 – 10 June 1936) was an English social reformer, educationist, and author. She and her husband, Samuel Augustus Barnett, founded the first "University Settlement" at To ...

’s St Jude’s at

Whitechapel Whitechapel is a district in East London and the future administrative centre of the London Borough of Tower Hamlets. It is a part of the East End of London, east of Charing Cross. Part of the historic county of Middlesex, the area formed ...

). Kimberly Morse Jones writes that "Pennell's criticism constitutes a vital component of a wider movement in Victorian criticism that came to be known as the New Art Criticism", listing Alfred Lys Baldry, D.S. MacColl, George Moore, R.A.M. Stevenson,

Charles Whibley Charles Whibley (9 December 1859 – 4 March 1930) was an English literary journalist and author. In literature and the arts, his views were progressive. He supported James Abbott McNeill Whistler (they had married sisters). He also recommended ...

and Frederick Wedmore as fellow contributors to this movement."Bibliography of the New Art Criticism of Elizabeth Robins Pennell (1890–95)" by Kimberly Morse Jones. ''Victorian Periodicals Review'', Volume 41, Number 3, Fall 2008, pp. 270–287

Food criticism

Pennell's place in the literary history of cooking and eating has recently been reappraised, as she "paved the way for food writers such as

Elizabeth David Elizabeth David CBE (born Elizabeth Gwynne, 26 December 1913 – 22 May 1992) was a British cookery writer. In the mid-20th century she strongly influenced the revitalisation of home cookery in her native country and beyond with articles and bo ...

, M. F. K. Fisher, and Jane Grigson," according to Jacqueline Block Williams. Pennell was a regular contributor to a column in the '' Pall Mall Gazette'', entitled "The Wares of Autolycus". (The reference is to a character in Shakespeare's ''

A Winter's Tale ''The Winter's Tale'' is a play by William Shakespeare originally published in the First Folio of 1623. Although it was grouped among the comedies, many modern editors have relabelled the play as one of Shakespeare's late romances. Some criti ...

''.) She commented that it was "daily written by women and I daresay believed by us to be the most entertaining array of unconsidered trifles that any Autolycus had ever offered to any eager world"; she compiled her culinary essays as ''The Feasts of Autolycus: the Diary of a Greedy Woman'' (1896). This compilation was reprinted in 2000 as ''The Delights of Delicate Eating'', and Pennell appears as one of the "forgotten female aesthetes" that Shaeffer evaluates in her book of that title, one who "aimed to reconfigure meals as high art, employing the language of aestheticism to turn eating into an act of intellectual appreciation". Clarke holds that Pennell demonstrated a "continuity" between "her thoughts on other types of taste".

Cookbook collecting

To enable her to write these light but erudite columns, Pennell bought cookbooks to use as reference material. At one point she owned more than 1000 volumes, including a rare

first edition The bibliographical definition of an edition includes all copies of a book printed from substantially the same setting of type, including all minor typographical variants. First edition According to the definition of ''edition'' above, a b ...

Hannah Glasse Hannah Glasse (; March 1708 – 1 September 1770) was an English cookery writer of the 18th century. Her first cookery book, ''The Art of Cookery Made Plain and Easy'', published in 1747, became the best-selling recipe book that century. It w ...

, which led to her becoming, in the view of culinary historian Cynthia D. Bertelsen, "one of the most well-known cookbook collectors in the world". Pennell compiled a bibliography of her culinary library, which appeared first in articles for ''The Atlantic'' and then in a book entitled ''My Cookery Books'', focussing on C17 and C18 English writers. Much of this collection eventually went to the Rare Book and Special Collections Division at the

Library of Congress The Library of Congress (LOC) is the research library that officially serves the United States Congress and is the ''de facto'' national library of the United States. It is the oldest federal cultural institution in the country. The libra ...

, where curator Leonard N. Beck gave it a professional evaluation, pairing her collection with that of food chemist Katherine Bitting See the Elizabeth Robins Pennell Collection. The title, ''Two Loaf-Givers'', refers to the Old English etymology of "lady"; a digital version is available.

Biographies

Following her success with ''Mary Wollstonecraft'', Pennell wrote other biographies, producing in 1906 the first one of her uncle, Charles Leland, who had written, or compiled, ''

Aradia, or the Gospel of the Witches ''Aradia, or the Gospel of the Witches'' is a book composed by the American folklorist Charles Godfrey Leland that was published in 1899. It contains what he believed was the religious text of a group of pagan witches in Tuscany, Italy that docu ...

'' (1899), a book very influential in the development of the

Neopagan Modern paganism, also known as contemporary paganism and neopaganism, is a term for a religion or family of religions influenced by the various historical pre-Christian beliefs of pre-modern peoples in Europe and adjacent areas of North Afric ...

religion of

Wicca Wicca () is a modern Pagan religion. Scholars of religion categorise it as both a new religious movement and as part of the occultist stream of Western esotericism. It was developed in England during the first half of the 20th century and w ...

. The Pennells were friends and correspondents of the painter James Abbott McNeill Whistler, and they wrote a lengthy biography of him in 1911. (Her fellow art critic

Lady Colin Campbell Georgia Arianna, Lady Colin Campbell (''née'' Ziadie, born 17 August 1949), also known as Lady C, is a British Jamaican author, socialite, and television personality who has published seven books about the British royal family. They include ...

, whose famous portrait by Giovanni Boldini Pennell had praised, was also close to Whistler.) Pennell also wrote a biography, after his death in 1928, of her husband.

Cycle tourism

Thomas Humber and C H Lambert on a Tandem 1885

The final string to her bow was as a cyclist. She praised cycling in general, and the ease with which it enabled city dwellers to escape to the countryside, for its fresh air and views. She claimed that "there is no more healthful or more stimulating form of exercise; there is no physical pleasure greater than that of being borne along, at a good pace, over a hard, smooth road by your own exertions". She disparaged racing (for men but especially for women), preferring long unpressured travel, and wondering if she had inadvertently "broken the record as a touring wheel-woman". She started off cycling in the 1870s, while she still lived in Philadelphia. On moving to London, she and her husband exchanged their Coventry Rotary tandem tricycle for a Humber model, going on to experiment with a single tricycle, a tandem bicycle, and finally a single bicycle with a step-through ("dropped") frame. The first journey that she turned into a book was ''A Canterbury Pilgrimage'', a homage to

Chaucer Geoffrey Chaucer (; – 25 October 1400) was an English poet, author, and civil servant best known for '' The Canterbury Tales''. He has been called the "father of English literature", or, alternatively, the "father of English poetry". He w ...

's ''

Canterbury Tales ''The Canterbury Tales'' ( enm, Tales of Caunterbury) is a collection of twenty-four stories that runs to over 17,000 lines written in Middle English by Geoffrey Chaucer between 1387 and 1400. It is widely regarded as Chaucer's '' magnum opu ...

'', as a gentle introduction to cycling in England. Over the next few years, the pair took several trips together, including another literary pilgrimage, this time on the trail of

Laurence Sterne Laurence Sterne (24 November 1713 – 18 March 1768), was an Anglo-Irish novelist and Anglican cleric who wrote the novels ''The Life and Opinions of Tristram Shandy, Gentleman'' and '' A Sentimental Journey Through France and Italy'', publishe ...

's 1765 travel novel ''

A Sentimental Journey Through France and Italy ''A Sentimental Journey Through France and Italy'' is a novel by Laurence Sterne, written and first published in 1768, as Sterne was facing death. In 1765, Sterne travelled through France and Italy as far south as Naples, and after returning det ...

''. On a later leg of this 1885 journey they "wheeled" a tandem tricycle from Florence to Rome, attracting more attention than she was comfortable with, as possibly the first female rider that the Italians had ever seen. In 1886, now each on

safety bicycle A safety bicycle (or simply a safety) is a type of bicycle that became very popular beginning in the late 1880s as an alternative to the penny-farthing ("ordinary") and is now the most common type of bicycle. Early bicycles of this style were know ...

s, they journeyed to Eastern Europe. This was at a key time in the history of the bicycle, and, of course, in the history of

women's rights Women's rights are the rights and entitlements claimed for women and girls worldwide. They formed the basis for the women's rights movement in the 19th century and the feminist movements during the 20th and 21st centuries. In some countri ...

as well, and they were both intertwined, in the figure of the

Suffragists Suffrage, political franchise, or simply franchise, is the right to vote in public, political elections and referendums (although the term is sometimes used for any right to vote). In some languages, and occasionally in English, the right to v ...

and social activists such as Susan B. Anthony and Frances Willard recognised the transformative power of the bicycle. By the time the Pennells had gone ''Over the Alps on a Bicycle'' (1898),

Annie Londonderry Annie Cohen Kopchovsky (1870 – 11 November 1947), known as Annie Londonderry, was a Jewish Latvian immigrant to the United States who in 1894–95 became the first woman to bicycle around the world. After having completed her travel, she buil ...

had already become the first woman to bicycle around the world. There was a ready audience for Robins Pennell's books, and the last-mentioned was chosen as a book of the month.

Later life

The Pennells moved back to the United States towards the end of

World War I World War I (28 July 1914 11 November 1918), often abbreviated as WWI, was List of wars and anthropogenic disasters by death toll, one of the deadliest global conflicts in history. Belligerents included much of Europe, the Russian Empire, ...

, settling in

New York City New York, often called New York City or NYC, is the List of United States cities by population, most populous city in the United States. With a 2020 population of 8,804,190 distributed over , New York City is also the L ...

. After her husband's death, she moved from Brooklyn to Manhattan, dying there in February 1936. Their books, especially her significant cookbook collection (reduced to 433) and a 300-strong collection on fine printing and bibliography, were bequeathed to the Library of Congress. Her papers and those of her husband are held by university archives. Pennell often made her contributions under

pen name A pen name, also called a ''nom de plume'' or a literary double, is a pseudonym (or, in some cases, a variant form of a real name) adopted by an author and printed on the title page or by-line of their works in place of their real name. A pen na ...

sSullivan, Graeme. ''Art Practice as Research: Inquiry in the Visual Arts.'' Page 14. Sage Publications Inc., 2005. such as "N.N." (No Name), "A.U." (Author Unknown) and "P.E.R." (her initials jumbled up).

Publications

*
Life of Mary Wollstonecraft
' (Roberts Brothers, 1884, part of the "Famous Women" series) *
A Canterbury Pilgrimage
' (Seeley & Co., 1885) *
An Italian Pilgrimage
' (Seeley & Co., 1887) with Joseph Pennell. *
Our Sentimental Journey through France and Italy
' (1888) with Joseph Pennell. *''Our Journey to the Hebrides'' (with Joseph Pennell) (1889) *''The Stream of Pleasure: a Narrative of a Journey on the Thames from Oxford to London'' (with Joseph Pennell) (1891) *
To Gipsyland
' (The Century Co., 1893) *''Tantallon Castle'' (1895) (see

Tantallon Castle Tantallon Castle is a ruined mid-14th-century fortress, located east of North Berwick, in East Lothian, Scotland. It sits atop a promontory opposite the Bass Rock, looking out onto the Firth of Forth. The last medieval curtain wall castle to ...

*''London's Underground Railways''(1895) *
The Feasts of Autolycus: the Diary of a Greedy Woman
' (1896). A compilation of the culinary essays she first published in the ''Pall Mall Gazette''. Re-issued 1901 as ''The Delights of Delicate Eating''. (Also, ''A Guide for the Greedy, by a Greedy Woman: being a new and revised edition of "The Feasts of Autolycus"''.) Reprinted in 2000 with an introduction by Jacqueline Block Williams. *''Around London by Bicycle'' (1897)
Over the Alps on a Bicycle
(1898) with Joseph Pennell * ''Lithography and Lithographers'' (1898) with Joseph Pennell (see also 1915)

(1903). From the Collections at the

*
Charles Godfrey Leland: a Biography
' (Houghton, Mifflin & Co., 1906) *
French Cathedrals, Monasteries and Abbeys, and Sacred Sites of France
' (New York, The Century Co.) 1909 *
Our House and the People in It
' (Houghton, Mifflin & Co., 1910) (Also ''Our House and London Out of Our Windows'' 1912.) *
The Life of James McNeill Whistler
' (J. B. Lippincott company, 1911) with Joseph Pennell. *''Our Philadelphia'' (1914) with Joseph Pennell. *''Lithography and Lithographers'' (1915) with Joseph Pennell 'Not merely a new edition. The book is new though based upon the old!--(Preface) (see also 1898). *
Nights: Rome & Venice in the Aesthetic Eighties, London & Paris in the Fighting Nineties
' (J. B. Lippincott Company, 1916) *
The Lovers
' (W. Heinemann, 1917) *
The Whistler Journal
' (J. B. Lippincott Company, 1921) *'' Italy's Garden of Eden'' (1927) *''The Art of Whistler'' (1928) *''The Life and Letters of Joseph Pennell'' (1929) *''Whistler the Friend'' (1930) *(anthologized in) ''American Food Writing: an Anthology with Classic Recipes'', ed. Molly O'Neill (Library of America, 2007)

References

The University of Texas at Austin The University of Texas at Austin (UT Austin, UT, or Texas) is a public research university in Austin, Texas. It was founded in 1883 and is the oldest institution in the University of Texas System. With 40,916 undergraduate students, 11,075 ...

Elizabeth Robins Pennell Collection
at the