{{Short description|English journalist and writer (1868–1934)}} {{Use dmy dates|date=December 2015}} {{Use British English|date=December 2015}} {{Infobox writer <!-- For more information see :Template:Infobox Writer/doc. --> | name = Constance Peel | honorific_suffix = {{post-nominals|country=GBR|OBE|size=100%}} | image = Mrs. C. S. Peel.jpg | image_size = | alt = | pseudonym = {{Cslist|Mrs. C. S. Peel|Dorothy Constance Peel}} | birth_name = Constance Dorothy Evelyn Bayliff | birth_date = {{Birth date|df=y|1868|04|27}} | birth_place = Ganarew, Herefordshire, England | death_date = {{Death date and age|df=y|1934|08|07|1868|04|27}} | death_place = Kensington, London, England | resting_place = | occupation = {{Cslist|Journalist|writer}} | language = English | education = | subject = {{Cslist|House-keeping|cookery|life of women}} | notableworks = | spouse = {{Marriage|Charles Steers Peel|1894}} | children = 3 | relatives = Robert Peel (grandfather) | signature = Signature of Constance Peel.svg | signature_alt = | portaldisp = | awards = OBE (1919) | caption = Peel in 1917 }}
'''Constance Dorothy Evelyn Peel''' {{post-nominals|country=GBR|OBE}} ({{Nee|'''Baliff'''}}; 27 April 1868 – 7 August 1934) was an English journalist and writer, known for her non-fiction books on cheap household management and cookery. She wrote with the name '''Mrs. C. S. Peel''', taking the name of her husband, Charles Steers Peel. She is sometimes cited as '''Dorothy Constance Peel'''.<ref>See, for example, {{cite book|author=Darling, Elizabeth|chapter='The house that is a woman's book come true': The all-Europe house and four women's spatial practices in inter-war England|title=Women and the Making of Built Space in England, 1870–1950|chapter-url=https://books.google.com/books?id=QIeuUQqJCy4C&pg=PA123 |editor=Elizabeth Darling |editor2=Lesley Whitworth|publisher=Ashgate|year=2007|isbn= 9780754651857|pages=123–42}}</ref> After the First World War, she worked on behalf of women, sitting on governmental committees.
==Early life== Constance Dorothy Evelyn Bayliff was born in Ganarew, Herefordshire on 27 April 1868. She was the seventh child of Richard Lane Bayliff, a military captain, and his wife Henrietta ({{nee|Peel}}). As a young child, Constance lived in Wyesham, Monmouthshire, before she moved to Bristol. She was primarily educated at home and suffered from breathing problems. At 17, she moved to Folkestone and had a coming out at a military ball. In her childhood, she spent much time socialising with families much richer than her own; she had actually had a fairly frugal upbringing.<ref name="DNB">{{cite ODNB |author=Ryan, Deborah S. |title=Peel [''née'' Bayliff], Constance Dorothy Evelyn |year= 2004 |doi=10.1093/ref:odnb/56783}}</ref>
==Career and marriage== [[File:Entrees Made Easy by Mrs. C. S. Peel.jpg|thumb|''Entrees Made Easy'', published 1905 by Constable & Co.]]
Bayliff began a career in journalism when she and her family moved to Twickenham. An older sister was producing illustrations for ''The Queen'', and Bayliff won a competition to write for ''Woman''. Arnold Bennett, then editor of the periodical, arranged for Bayliff to receive tutorship from a schoolteacher, and she also learnt from Bennett's editing.<ref name="DNB" />
In December 1894, Bayliff married the electrical engineer Charles Steers Peel, her second cousin, and the couple moved to Dewsbury. After this point, she wrote under the name Mrs. C. S. Peel. The couple had two daughters, but lost a third child. Peel's first book, 1898's ''The New Home'', drew upon her experience of starting her household on modest means. Between 1903 and 1906, Peel edited the periodicals ''Hearth and Home'', ''Woman'' and ''Myra's Journal'', and authored a series of cookery books.<ref name="DNB" />
Peel changed career after losing a child, opening a hat shop with Ethel Kentish, her friend. The shop was successful, and clientele included the actress Ellen Terry. However, the business closed down due to Peel's ill health, and in 1913, she returned to writing.<ref name="DNB" />
Peel became editor of ''The Queen'' and wrote for ''Hearth and Home'' and ''The Lady''. In 1914, she published the first of her four novels, this one called ''The Hat Shop''. Works of non-fiction written in the 1910s included ''Marriage on Small Means'', published in 1914, and ''The Labour Saving House'', published in 1917.<ref name="DNB" />
During the First World War, Peel ran a Lambeth-based club for the wives of servicemen, and spoke on behalf of the United Workers' Association and the National War Savings Association. She co-directed, with Maud Pember Reeves, the women's service of the Ministry of Food during the voluntary rationing of 1917-8, as well as publicly speaking about economical household food practices.<ref name="DNB" />
Peel was editor of the women's page of ''The Daily Mail'' after being appointed to the post in 1918 by Lord Northcliffe, though she left the position after being diagnosed with diabetes in 1920. She was awarded an OBE in 1919. After the war, Peel worked towards the improvement of women's domestic lives, sitting on committees addressing domestic service and working-class housing for the Ministry of Reconstruction, as well as committees organised by other organisations. She also became vice-president of the British Women Housewives' Association.<ref name="DNB" />
==Later life and legacy== Peel produced memoirs spanning five volumes. Her autobiography, ''Life's Enchanted Cup: an Autobiography, 1872–1933'' was published in 1933. She died in Kensington, London, on 7 August 1934, due to her myocarditis and diabetes.<ref name="DNB"/>
An article in ''The Times'' commented on Peel's highly varied career, saying that "her industry was astonishing, for she went down coalmines, inspected prisons, reformatories and factories, examined schools and studied diet for the young, in addition to regular journalism and four novels".<ref>{{cite book|title= Women's Writing on the First World War|url= https://archive.org/details/womenswritingonf0000unse|url-access= registration |author=Cardinal, Agnes |author2=Goldman, Dorothy |author3=Hattaway, Judith |publisher=Oxford University Press|year=1999|isbn=9780198122807|page= [https://archive.org/details/womenswritingonf0000unse/page/147 147]}}</ref> The social historian John Burnett called her "the doyenne of writers on domestic economy".<ref>{{cite book|title= Plenty and Want |url=https://books.google.com/books?id=8ENLmMZS8W8C&pg=PA265 |author=Burnett, John|publisher=Routledge|year=2013|isbn=9781136090844|page= 265}}</ref>
==References== {{reflist}}
==External links== * {{Gutenberg author|id=44428}} *[https://archive.org/details/yearinpubliclife00peelrich ''A Year in Public Life''], Mrs. C. S. Peel, 1919. Hosted by Archive.org {{Authority control}}
{{DEFAULTSORT:Peel, Constance}} Category:1868 births Category:1934 deaths Category:19th-century English writers Category:20th-century English memoirists Category:19th-century English women writers Category:20th-century English novelists Category:20th-century English journalists Category:English magazine editors Category:English newspaper editors Category:English food writers Category:English autobiographers Category:English women's rights activists Category:Officers of the Order of the British Empire Category:Writers from Herefordshire Category:Deaths from diabetes in England Category:English women memoirists Category:English women newspaper editors Category:English cookbook writers Category:English women food writers Category:British women magazine editors Category:English women editors Category:Women's page journalists Category:Daily Mail journalists Category:Deaths from myocarditis Category:Vegetarian cookbook writers Category:Victorian women writers Category:19th-century pseudonymous women writers Category:20th-century English women novelists Category:English women civil rights activists Category:20th-century British newspaper editors Category:20th-century pseudonymous women writers Category:19th-century pseudonymous writers Category:20th-century pseudonymous writers