The Indigo Press has acquired The Spinster Cookbook: Culture, Politics and Pleasure in the Single Woman’s Kitchen by Eli Davies.

Publisher Susie Nicklin bought UK and Commonwealth, Europe-exclusive rights excluding Canada from Jon Curzon at Artellus Limited. The book will be published in B-format hardback on 11th June 2026.

"The Spinster Cookbook is a piercing exploration of what it means to cook for one in a society designed for couples and families," the synopsis says. "With sharp cultural insight, Eli Davies takes us on a culinary tour of the single woman’s kitchen, a space shaped as much by a search for freedom as by appetite."

The blurb adds: "She looks at what happens when food is uncoupled from domestic duty and romantic relationships and what it means to cook (or not) for yourself and by yourself. How does this shape your mealtimes, the way you shop for food, the kitchen equipment you use, and your relationship to cleaning up and looking after yourself?"

Nicklin said: "I fell for this book immediately after I read the proposal. Eli had a wonderful idea and she has patiently and tenderly brought it to life, examining the kitchens of spinsters through their books and lives, including her own. It is warm and convivial and indispensable."

Davies said: "Food has always told stories about who we are and who we’re allowed to be. The Spinster Cookbook explores how food shapes the complex lives of single women, revealing the kitchen as a site of both solitude and freedom. It shows how cooking for one can, for me and many others, become an act of care, defiance, pleasure and self-expression, and tells stories of women written on their own terms."