Kathryn Hughes is the prize-winning author of four previous books on Victorian social history, including a biography of Mrs Beeton which was longlisted for the Baillie Gifford Prize and adapted for the BBC. She regularly writers for the Guardian , the New York Review of Books and the Times Literary Supplement . Kathryn is currently Professor Emerita at the University of East Anglia, and a Fellow of both the Royal Literary Society and the Royal Historical Society.