author
Elizabeth Robins Pennell
1855–1936
An American writer, critic, and biographer who spent much of her adult life in London, she brought unusual energy to subjects ranging from food and travel to art and literature. She is especially remembered for lively books on eating, cycling, and major cultural figures such as Mary Wollstonecraft and James McNeill Whistler.
10 Audiobooks
Mary Wollstonecraft
by Elizabeth Robins Pennell
A Canterbury Pilgrimage
by Joseph Pennell, Elizabeth Robins Pennell
The Feasts of Autolycus: The Diary of a Greedy Woman
by Elizabeth Robins Pennell
The Life of James McNeill Whistler
by Elizabeth Robins Pennell, Joseph Pennell
Our House and London out of Our Windows
by Elizabeth Robins Pennell
Our Journey to the Hebrides
by Joseph Pennell, Elizabeth Robins Pennell
Two Pilgrims' Progress; from fair Florence, to the eternal city of Rome
by Joseph Pennell, Elizabeth Robins Pennell
Nights: Rome, Venice, in the Aesthetic Eighties; London, Paris, in the Fighting Nineties
by Elizabeth Robins Pennell
Our sentimental journey through France and Italy A new edition with Appendix
by Joseph Pennell, Elizabeth Robins Pennell
Our Philadelphia
by Elizabeth Robins Pennell
About the author
Born in Philadelphia in 1855, Elizabeth Robins Pennell became a remarkably versatile writer whose work ranged across biography, criticism, travel writing, and essays. She made her home in London for most of her adult life and moved in artistic and literary circles that shaped much of her work.
Pennell wrote on an unusually wide mix of subjects, which helps explain why she still feels distinctive today. Along with biographies of figures including Mary Wollstonecraft, she became known for art criticism and for books that treated everyday pleasures with real intelligence, especially food and cycling.
She often collaborated with her husband, the artist and illustrator Joseph Pennell, and together they were part of a lively transatlantic cultural world. She died in New York City in 1936, leaving behind a body of work that feels curious, approachable, and ahead of its time in the way it connected culture with ordinary life.