Hartley, Dorothy (1893–1985) widely seen as the writer who has made the greatest single contribution to the history of popular food in England. The phrase ‘popular food’ is chosen deliberately because the foodways which she recorded were those of the populace, not of court circles or the aristocratic and wealthy classes. She wrote other books about rural England, including Water in England (1964) and Made in England (1939), but it seems likely that Food in England (1954) will be her most enduring achievement. She illustrated it herself (her normal practice) and furnished it with many apt quotations and anecdotes, often from obscure sources, as well as from her own lifetime of experience in the kitchen and as an insatiable, curious researcher. Looking back at her earlier life, one can see the significance for Food in England of several experiences, in particular: that she started cooking for her family when she was only 12 years old; that she became an art student in 1919, and was a prize pupil (and, later, a teacher of art); that she spent much time during the 1920s in the British Museum Reading Room; that in the 1930s she spent years travelling by bicycle or on foot around the UK with pen and camera, producing weekly articles on rural life for a national newspaper; and that after a spell with one of the women’s service organizations in the Second World War she was involved in teaching and lecturing on the history of food in various colleges. It can thus be seen that she was almost ideally equipped to take on her unique and pioneering role.
