Miss Leslie

New Receipts for Cooking. by Miss Leslie

Eliza Leslie (1787-1858), frequently referred to as Miss Leslie, was an American author of popular cookbooks during the nineteenth century. She also wrote household management books, etiquette books, novels, short stories and articles for magazines and newspapers. Leslie was born on November 15, 1787 in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania to Lydia Baker and Robert Leslie, both originally from Maryland. Her father, a clock and watchmaker, was a friend of Benjamin Franklin and Thomas Jefferson according to Eliza. The family moved to England in 1793 when Leslie was five years old for about six years. She was the eldest of five children. Two of her siblings, Charles Robert Leslie, who lived in London, and Anna Leslie, were artists. Her brother Thomas Jefferson Leslie graduated from West Point and her other sister, Martha "Patty," married the book publisher Henry Charles Carey. Following her father's death in 1803, her mother operated a series of boarding houses. They moved from their home on High Street to a boarding house on South Sixth Street, then Spruce Street, and, finally, to 1 Minor for the last two years of her mother's life before she died in 1824.