Elizabeth Josephine Craig, MBE, FRSA (16 February 1883 – 7 June 1980) was a Scottish food writer, journalist, home economist and one of the most renowned British celebrity chefs of the twentieth century, whose career lasted over 50 years.
Elizabeth Craig was born in Linlithgowshire (now West Lothian), Scotland to John Mitchell Craig (then a student of Divinity) and Catherine Anne Craig (d. 3 March 1929). In 1978, two years before her death, she declared that she had a "wonderful childhood in Scotland"
In later life, she married American war correspondent Arthur Mann (d. 9 June 1973), yet retained her maiden name for the purpose of her books.
Elizabeth Craig was one of eight children of John Mitchell Craig, a minister of the Free Church of Scotland. The family lived at the Manse in Memus, Kirriemuir, in Scotland.
After having her engagement announced in The Times (a London newspaper) on 11 August 1919, she married American war correspondent and broadcaster Arthur Mann of Washington, D.C.”, at St Martin in the Fields Church, Trafalgar Square. They had no children but lived with her niece (called Elizabeth Jean Craig, and the daughter of her brother Ernest Craig), featuring her in many of her newspaper articles.
Her niece Elizabeth Jean Craig has four children: Susie Field (a former advertising executive in Edinburgh), Louise Adorian (lives in Dorchester), Deborah Reilly (lives in Chard) and Julian Henry (a public relations executive in London).
Elizabeth Craig's writing career began in Dundee where she studied journalism.
She first published a cookery feature in the Daily Express in 1920, after 8 years in journalism, following comments from the Daily Mail’s then film editor who declared she was “the only woman in Fleet Street who could cook”.
This talented writer was soon noticed by other newspapers and magazines who engaged her to write for them, and she published her first book in 1923. A successful career ensued, publications appearing in many national newspapers, and many more books being written. Craig, like many other food writers successfully managed to make a career from her love and passion for cooking.
Craig was also a founding member of the International P.E.N., and at the request of the founder, Catharine Dawson Scott, attended the first meeting of the association at the Florence Restaurant in London where John Galsworthy was elected its first president
Elizabeth Craig’s love of cooking lasted her whole life. She started to cook when she was six and she started to collect recipes from the age of 12. She declared that the only formal training she had in cookery was a “three months course in Dundee”.
Craig began publishing cookery books after the end of World War I and proceeded through World War II and into the 1980s. She began writing in times when food was scarce and rationing was heavily relied upon, and her career ended when the large majority of people had a fridge and an opportunity to access a much wider variety of foods: this can be observed in her writing as more diverse dishes appear in her later books.
Her contribution to English culinary literature comprises a very large corpus of traditional British recipes, although not only this: included are also a considerable collection of recipes from other countries which she liked to collect during visits abroad
As well as publishing many books, Craig also capitalised on her celebrity status as a household name in other ways: she endorsed many food products, restaurants, kitchen apparatus and slimming aids both in newspaper advertisements and in promotional recipe books.
