Elizabeth Josephine Craig (1883–1980)

Elizabeth Josephine Craig was born in West Lothian, Scotland, one of eight children of Rev. John Mitchell Craig, a Presbyterian minister for the Free Church of Scotland, and his wife Catherine Anne Nicoll. She was raised in Memus, Kirriemuir, Scotland, but went on to live most of her life in England. She attended Forfar Academy and George Watson's Ladies' College in Edinburgh before returning to Forfar Academy as a teacher. She studied journalism in Dundee. In 1919, she married Arthur Mann, an American war correspondent and broadcaster in London; all her writing was published under her birth name.
She began contributing articles to English newspapers in 1920, and her first cookery feature appeared that year in the Daily Express. She was reprinted in American newspapers for several decades until her older, British vocabulary began to distance her from the next generation of readers. In the 1930s, she was hired by the Phoenix Glassware company to help design and lend her name to their range of heat-proof glass cooking dishes.

She used the 1930s to establish herself as being able to give thrifty cooking advice, which would later stand her in good stead: When World War II came along in 1939, Elizabeth was ready with sensible advice and encouragement for home cooks, especially with food scarcity and rationing. She was the author of more than 50 books on cooking, housekeeping, and gardening. She was a founding member of International P.E.N. She was appointed MBE and was a Fellow of the Royal Society of Arts.