Hunger and Work in a Savage Tribe examines the cultural aspects of food and eating among the Southern Bantu, taking as its starting point the bold statement 'nutrition as a biological process is more fundamental than sex'. When it was first published in 1932, with a preface by Malinowski, it laid the groundwork for sociological theory of nutrition. Richards was also among the first anthropologists to establish women's lives and the social sphere as legitimate subjects for anthropological study.

Audrey I. Richards (1899–1984) was for many years lecturer in Social Anthropology at the London School of Economics and is the author of Land, Labour and Diet in Northern Rhodesia and Chisungu: a girls’ initiation ceremony among the Bemba of Northern Rhodesia. She was one of the first anthropologists to study women’s lives and the social sphere and was herself one of the first female anthropologists in British academia.