author
Elizabeth Moxon
Best known for the 1741 cookbook English Housewifry, this early English food writer helped shape practical cookery writing for everyday households. Though little is known about her life, her work remained influential for decades.
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About the author
Elizabeth Moxon was an English writer on cookery, active in the mid-18th century. She is chiefly remembered for English Housewifry, first published in 1741, a substantial collection of recipes and household guidance that later writers and historians have treated as an important early cookbook.
She is closely associated with Pontefract in Yorkshire, and her reputation rests less on a richly documented personal history than on the lasting success of her book. Because surviving biographical details are sparse, many accounts describe her with the historical marker “fl. 1740–1754,” meaning those are the years in which she is known to have been active.
Today, Moxon is often noted as one of the early women who helped establish English culinary writing as a recognizable genre. Her appeal now lies not only in the recipes themselves, but also in the window they offer into domestic life, taste, and kitchen practice in 18th-century Britain.