Author: Acton, Eliza
Biography:
ACTON, Eliza (1799-1859: ODNB)
The eldest child of John Acton, brewer, and his wife Elizabeth Mercer, she was born on 17 Apr. 1799 in Battle, Sussex. The Actons were originally from Suffolk and moved to Ipswich when she was a child. In 1816 she and a Miss Nicholson established a girls’ boarding school in nearby Claydon; it lasted until about 1820 when Eliza Acton left with her family for France possibly because of her delicate health or, more likely, because of her father’s increasingly precarious financial situation. She published her poems on return from France at about the same time that her father was declared bankrupt. In 1837 she was living in Tonbridge, Kent, when Longman, her publisher, suggested that she try her hand at writing a practical book. Modern Cookery, with its innovative layout and tips for novice cooks, was published in 1845. The 1851 Census shows her living in Hastings with her mother and one sister, Catherine. She moved to London where she lodged at Snowdon House in Hampstead. On 4 Apr. 1856 she appealed for support from the RLF, citing illness as the cause of her pecuniary distress. She also states that she sold the copyright to Modern Cookery, presumably to pay expenses. The RLF turned her down on the grounds of too little evidence of literary authorship. Acton published The English Bread Book in 1857. She died in Hampstead on 13 Feb. 1859 and was buried in the cemetery there. Of her other works, a short (7 pages) poem, The Voice of the North, was published in 1842. DNB attributes to her “The Chronicle of Castel Framlingham,” published in Fulcher’s Sudbury Journal (1838). The poem was also printed in the anonymous Historical Reveries, by a Suffolk Villager (Fulcher and Longman, 1839), making it possible that book of verse is by Acton and not by Sarah Wilkinson (q.v.) or by Elizabeth Susan Cowell (b c. 1812) as some library catalogues claim. (DNB & ODNB 22 Apr. 2022; ancestry.co.uk 22 Apr. 2022; Suffolk Chronicle 6 Apr. 1816; Sun 21 Nov. 1827; RLF file 1407) SR