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Shirley Conran
Dame Shirley Ida Conran DBE (née Pearce; 21 September 1932 – 9 May 2024) was an English author, designer, journalist, and social entrepreneur.
After Conran's marriage to Terence Conran, with whom she worked as a designer and sales director at Conran Fabrics, she became women's editor of The Observer and the Daily Mail, launching its Femail section. After a serious illness left her with ME, making it difficult for her to work, she wrote best-selling books including the feminist self-help Superwoman (1975) and the bonkbuster Lace (1982).
In later life, Conran campaigned and founded charities to encourage maths education for women. For this, she was made a Dame Commander of the Order of the British Empire and was invested in hospital a week before her death.
Conran was born as Shirley Ida Pearce on 21 September 1932 in the Municipal Borough of Hendon, Middlesex, to Ida and Thirlby Pearce. She attended St Paul's Girls' School and then a finishing school in Switzerland, which later provided some inspiration for the fictional school L'Hirondelle in her 1982 novel Lace. Her father ran a prosperous dry-cleaners but was violent when drunk and forced her to leave home at 19 to earn a living. She was taken back after two months after her failure to get a job resulted in malnutrition [clarification needed] but her mother gave her a weekly allowance of £3 and she left again in a month. Now thin, she worked as an artist's model and used the income to train as a sculptor at Portsmouth College of Art and as a painter at Chelsea Polytechnic.
Terence Conran ran a café in Chelsea and they married in 1955. She worked with him as a fabric designer and they had two children – Jasper and Sebastian – who have since become designers too. Her husband was unfaithful and refused to reform and so she divorced him.
Following the breakdown of her marriage, Conran turned to writing in order to support her children. She wrote for the Daily Mail and in 1968 became women's editor and launched Femail, the newspaper's first dedicated women's section. Writing in the Mail in 2018, Conran reflected that this was the first time women in British journalism were being allowed free rein to write about what interests them, given "newspapers had only ever included a woman's section about knitting, dress patterns, recipes and the odd interview with worthy charity organisers." For its pioneering work, Conran believes the first edition of "Femail" magazine should be in the Feminist Archives.
Conran also became the women's editor for The Observer, and wrote columns for Vanity Fair. But her career as a full-time journalist was terminated at age 36 when she had a serious viral pneumonia. This left her with myalgic encephalomyelitis/chronic fatigue syndrome – a debilitating condition which was not well understood and made it difficult for her to cope. She made notes to help her with the chores of housework and these were the basis for the book Superwoman, which her friend, Patrick Seale, pushed her into writing by obtaining an advance from a publisher. This was successful and coined the phrase that became a feminist slogan: "Life's too short to stuff a mushroom."
Her first novel, Lace, was published in 1982 by Simon & Schuster and was a huge bestseller, spending 13 weeks on the New York Times Best Seller list, reaching as high as No. 6. It became known as a 'bonkbuster' for its many explicit and often bizarre sex scenes. It was adapted into a 1980s US miniseries starring Phoebe Cates. It contains the infamous line: "Which one of you bitches is my mother?"
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Shirley Conran
Dame Shirley Ida Conran DBE (née Pearce; 21 September 1932 – 9 May 2024) was an English author, designer, journalist, and social entrepreneur.
After Conran's marriage to Terence Conran, with whom she worked as a designer and sales director at Conran Fabrics, she became women's editor of The Observer and the Daily Mail, launching its Femail section. After a serious illness left her with ME, making it difficult for her to work, she wrote best-selling books including the feminist self-help Superwoman (1975) and the bonkbuster Lace (1982).
In later life, Conran campaigned and founded charities to encourage maths education for women. For this, she was made a Dame Commander of the Order of the British Empire and was invested in hospital a week before her death.
Conran was born as Shirley Ida Pearce on 21 September 1932 in the Municipal Borough of Hendon, Middlesex, to Ida and Thirlby Pearce. She attended St Paul's Girls' School and then a finishing school in Switzerland, which later provided some inspiration for the fictional school L'Hirondelle in her 1982 novel Lace. Her father ran a prosperous dry-cleaners but was violent when drunk and forced her to leave home at 19 to earn a living. She was taken back after two months after her failure to get a job resulted in malnutrition [clarification needed] but her mother gave her a weekly allowance of £3 and she left again in a month. Now thin, she worked as an artist's model and used the income to train as a sculptor at Portsmouth College of Art and as a painter at Chelsea Polytechnic.
Terence Conran ran a café in Chelsea and they married in 1955. She worked with him as a fabric designer and they had two children – Jasper and Sebastian – who have since become designers too. Her husband was unfaithful and refused to reform and so she divorced him.
Following the breakdown of her marriage, Conran turned to writing in order to support her children. She wrote for the Daily Mail and in 1968 became women's editor and launched Femail, the newspaper's first dedicated women's section. Writing in the Mail in 2018, Conran reflected that this was the first time women in British journalism were being allowed free rein to write about what interests them, given "newspapers had only ever included a woman's section about knitting, dress patterns, recipes and the odd interview with worthy charity organisers." For its pioneering work, Conran believes the first edition of "Femail" magazine should be in the Feminist Archives.
Conran also became the women's editor for The Observer, and wrote columns for Vanity Fair. But her career as a full-time journalist was terminated at age 36 when she had a serious viral pneumonia. This left her with myalgic encephalomyelitis/chronic fatigue syndrome – a debilitating condition which was not well understood and made it difficult for her to cope. She made notes to help her with the chores of housework and these were the basis for the book Superwoman, which her friend, Patrick Seale, pushed her into writing by obtaining an advance from a publisher. This was successful and coined the phrase that became a feminist slogan: "Life's too short to stuff a mushroom."
Her first novel, Lace, was published in 1982 by Simon & Schuster and was a huge bestseller, spending 13 weeks on the New York Times Best Seller list, reaching as high as No. 6. It became known as a 'bonkbuster' for its many explicit and often bizarre sex scenes. It was adapted into a 1980s US miniseries starring Phoebe Cates. It contains the infamous line: "Which one of you bitches is my mother?"