C. Anne Wilson


Constance Anne Wilson was a Welsh food historian and librarian.

Early life and education

Wilson was born in Gower, near Swansea, the elder daughter of Rowland Wilson and his wife Constance Laycock. She attended Mumbles primary school and Glanmor Grammar School for Girls, Swansea and then followed her mother to Girton College, Cambridge where she read Classics. She subsequently obtained a London postgraduate diploma in the Archaeology of the Iron Age and the Roman Provinces.

Career

In 1961, Wilson was appointed an Assistant Librarian in the Brotherton Library at the University of Leeds. She was subject librarian for classics, archaeology, and ancient history, to which she subsequently added art and music. In the mid-1960s she catalogued the John F. Preston collection of historic cookery books, which led to her developing an interest in food history. She published the wide-ranging Food and Drink in Britain in 1973, and her more specialised The Book of Marmalade: its antecedents, its history and its rôle in the world today won the 1984 Diagram Prize for the oddest title of the year at the Frankfurt Book Fair. In 2006 she published Water of Life: a history of wine-distilling and spirits; 500 BC - AD 2000. She edited several volumes of the proceedings of the Leeds Symposium on Food History and Tradition.
Wilson retired from Leeds in 1992.

Death

Wilson died on 8 January 2023, at the age of 95.

Works

  • 1973: Food and Drink in Britain from the Stone Age to Recent Times. London: Constable
  • 1984: Philosophers, iōsis and Water of Life. Leeds: Leeds Philosophical and Literary Society
  • 1985: The Book of Marmalade: its antecedents, its history and its rôle in the world today, together with a collection of recipes for marmalades & marmalade cookery. London: Constable
  • 2006: Water of Life: a history of wine-distilling and spirits from 500 BC - AD 2000. Totnes: Prospect Books

    As editor

  • 1991: "Banquetting stuffe": the fare and social background of the Tudor and Stuart banquet. Edinburgh: Edinburgh UP
  • 1991: The Appetite and the Eye: visual aspects of food and its presentation within their historic context. Edinburgh: Edinburgh UP
  • 1991: Traditional Food East and West of the Pennines, Edinburgh UP, 1991
  • 1991: Waste Not, Want Not: food preservation from early times to the present day. Edinburgh: Edinburgh UP
  • 1993: "Liquid Nourishment": potable foods and stimulating drinks. Edinburgh: Edinburgh UP
  • 1993: Food for the community : special diets for special groups. Edinburgh: Edinburgh UP
  • 1993: Traditional Country House Cooking. London: Weidenfeld & Nicolson
  • 1994: Luncheon, Nuncheon and Other Meals: eating with the Victorians. Stroud: Sutton
  • *2004: Eating with the Victorians. Stroud: Sutton
  • 1998: The Country House Kitchen Garden, 1600-1950: how produce was grown and how it was used. Stroud: Sutton