The Art of Not Eating

The day Jessica Hamel-Akr discovered the ideas of George Cheyne – an 18th-century polymath and London society figure known as ‘Dr Diet’ – it sparked an intellectual obsession, a ten-year study of women’s appetite and a personal unravelling. In this bold and radical book, Hamel-Akr follows Cheyne through the pages of medical studies, novels and historical scandals, meeting ash-eating mystics, wasting society girls, impoverished female fasters and early feminist philosophers, all of whom were once grappling with nascent ideas around food, longing and the body. In doing so, she uncovers the 18th-century origins of both today’s diet culture and her own troubled relationship with wanting.