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Shirley Conran

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Dame
Shirley Conran
DBE
Conran on the cover of Superwoman (1977)
Born
Shirley Ida Pearce

(1932-09-21)21 September 1932
Middlesex, England
Died9 May 2024(2024-05-09) (aged 91)
London, England
NationalityBritish
EducationSt Paul's Girls' School
Alma materPortsmouth College of Art
Occupations
  • Novelist
  • Journalist
  • Founder
Known for
  • Founder of Maths Action
  • Founder of Maths Anxiety Trust
Spouses
​
​
(m. 1955; div. 1962)​
John Stephenson
​
(divorced)​
Kevin O'Sullivan
​
(divorced)​
Children
Parents
  • Thirlby Pearce (father)
  • Ida Florence Pearce (mother)
AwardsDame Commander of the Order of the British Empire

Dame Shirley Ida Conran DBE (née Pearce; 21 September 1932 – 9 May 2024) was a British author, designer, journalist and social entrepreneur.

After her 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).[citation needed]

In later life, she 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.[1]

Early life

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Conran was born as Shirley Ida Pearce on 21 September 1932 in the Municipal Borough of Hendon, Middlesex,[2] to Ida and Thirlby Pearce.[3][4] 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.[5][6] Her father ran a prosperous dry-cleaners but was violent when drunk and forced her to leave home at 19 to earn a living.[7][8][9] 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.[6][10]

Career

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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.[4]

Following the breakdown of her marriage, Conran turned to writing in order to support her children.[11] She wrote for the Daily Mail and in 1968 became women's editor and launched Femail, the newspaper's first dedicated women's section.[6] 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.[12]

Conran also became the women's editor for The Observer, and wrote columns for Vanity Fair.[11] 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."[9]

Her first novel, Lace, was published in 1982 by Simon & Schuster[13] and was a huge bestseller, spending 13 weeks on the New York Times Best Seller list, reaching as high as No. 6.[14] It became known as a 'bonkbuster' for its many explicit and often bizarre sex scenes.[7] It was adapted into a 1980s US miniseries[15] starring Phoebe Cates.[16] It contains the infamous line: "Which one of you bitches is my mother?"[15]

Personal life

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Conran was married to Terence Conran from 1955 to 1962; they were the parents of two sons: Sebastian and Jasper Conran, both designers.[7] After divorcing him, she married John Stephenson and then Kevin O'Sullivan who were both sales directors. These marriages just lasted 2–3 years each and, after she became a successful author, she gave up on marriage as "a woman has to be her own Prince Charming".[4]

In 2009, she wrote that she suffered from ME.[17]

Conran had homes in France and London, and lived in Monaco for several years.[18]

She founded the educational non-profit Maths Action.[19]

She died from pneumonia at a hospital in London on 9 May 2024, at the age of 91.[20][21]

Honours

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Conran was appointed Dame Commander of the Order of the British Empire (DBE) in the Truss resignation honours list for services to mathematics education as the founder of the Maths Anxiety Trust.[22][23]

Works

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Fiction

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  • Lace (Simon & Schuster, 1982)
  • Lace 2 (1985)
  • The Complete Story (omnibus, 1986)
  • Savages (1987,[24] movie rights owned by Warner Bros. but never made)[25]
  • The Amazing Umbrella Shop (1990 – children's book co-authored with her children Jasper and Sebastian Conran)
  • Crimson (1992)
  • Tiger Eyes (1994)
  • The Revenge (aka Revenge of Mimi Quinn, 1998)

Non-fiction

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  • Superwoman (1975)
  • Superwoman 2 (1977)
  • Superwoman in Action (1979)
  • Futurewoman: How to Survive Life After Thirty (1981)
  • The Magic Garden (1983)
  • Down with Superwoman: For Everyone Who Hates Housework (1990)
  • Money Stuff (2014)[26]

Other

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  • The Magic Garden was adapted as a computer program and published by Acornsoft for the BBC Micro as Shirley Conran's Magic Garden in 1983.[27]

References

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  1. ^ "Novelist and campaigner Dame Shirley Conran dies aged 91". BBC News. 9 May 2024. Archived from the original on 13 May 2024. Retrieved 14 May 2024.
  2. ^ "Index entry". FreeBMD. ONS. Retrieved 23 May 2024.
  3. ^ "Dame Shirley Conran, author and campaigner who blazed a trail with Superwoman and Lace – obituary". The Telegraph. 10 May 2024. Archived from the original on 12 May 2024. Retrieved 14 May 2024.
  4. ^ a b c "Dame Shirley Conran obituary: Bestselling author of Superwoman and Lace". The Times. 14 May 2024. Archived from the original on 13 May 2024. Retrieved 14 May 2024.
  5. ^ Bailey, Rosemary (1 August 1987). "Interview with Shirley Conran, New Woman magazine, 1987". rosemarybailey.com. Retrieved 23 November 2022.
  6. ^ a b c Mikhailova, Anna (6 November 2016). "One novel and my life was a different story". The Times. ISSN 0140-0460. Archived from the original on 23 November 2022. Retrieved 23 November 2022.
  7. ^ a b c Cooke, Rachel (29 July 2012). "Interview | Shirley Conran: all hail the queen of the bonkbuster". The Observer. Retrieved 19 December 2022.
  8. ^ Carey, Anna (28 July 2012). "Lifting the lace curtain". The Irish Times. Retrieved 12 November 2022.
  9. ^ a b "Interview: Shirley Conran, writer". www.scotsman.com. 29 July 2012. Archived from the original on 12 November 2022. Retrieved 12 November 2022.
  10. ^ "University of Portsmouth Information: Portsmouth University Information, Campus and History, England, UK". portsmouth.university-guides.com. Archived from the original on 23 November 2022. Retrieved 23 November 2022.
  11. ^ a b "Interview: Shirley's message from Monaco: She knows that if women want". The Independent. 7 June 1993. Archived from the original on 12 November 2022. Retrieved 12 November 2022.
  12. ^ Conran, Shirley, Daily Mail, 14 November 2018.
  13. ^ "Shirley Conran". fantasticfiction.co.uk. Archived from the original on 29 March 2007. Retrieved 16 April 2007.
  14. ^ "The New York Times Best Seller list: Fiction" (PDF). Hawes.com. 21 November 1982. Archived (PDF) from the original on 24 September 2015. Retrieved 12 March 2015.
  15. ^ a b Korda, Michael (1999). Another Life: A Memoir of Other People. Random House. pp. 477–479. ISBN 9780679456599.
  16. ^ "Phoebe Cates". IMDb. Archived from the original on 13 August 2017. Retrieved 12 November 2022.
  17. ^ Conran, Shirley (2009), The Optimum Health Clinic Foundation Archived 22 February 2017 at the Wayback Machine. Retrieved 20 February 2017.
  18. ^ Boseley, Sarah (31 May 1995). "Conran topless for a cause". The Guardian. p. 4.
  19. ^ "About Maths Action". mathsaction.org.uk. Archived from the original on 8 December 2015. Retrieved 28 October 2015.
  20. ^ Knight, Lucy (9 May 2024). "Shirley Conran, campaigner and 'queen of the bonkbuster', dies aged 91". The Guardian. Retrieved 9 May 2024.
  21. ^ Green, Penelope (22 May 2024). "Shirley Conran, Author Best Known for the Steamy 'Lace,' Dies at 91". The New York Times. Retrieved 22 May 2024.
  22. ^ "Resignation Honours 2023" (PDF). GOV.UK. Archived (PDF) from the original on 29 December 2023. Retrieved 30 December 2023.
  23. ^ "No. 64309". The London Gazette (Supplement). 7 February 2024. p. 2394.
  24. ^ Conran, Shirley (1 September 1987). Savages.
  25. ^ "Film projects with a female accent". Los Angeles Times Archives. 2 September 1987. Retrieved 18 May 2024.
  26. ^ "Shirley Conran wrote a bonkbuster to teach schoolgirls about sex". The Economist. 16 May 2024.
  27. ^ "Shirley Conran's Magic Garden". computinghistory.org.uk. Centre for Computing History. Retrieved 18 May 2024.
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