Women’s History Month: Elinor Lee
Day 14 of Women’s History Month features Elinor Lee, the longtime food editor of the Washington Post. She was mentioned in the recent Washington Post Cookbook.
Lee was a graduate of Beaver College. She was a teacher of dietetics at a hospital and a home economist before taking a Washington radio job in 1937. When she left radio, her morning program, “At Home with Elinor Lee,” was the top-rated radio show in the 9:15 time slot, and her 12:15 p.m. show, “Home Edition,” was one of the top ten10 daytime shows in the nation’s capital. Lee joined the staff of the Washington Post in 1953, but she continued to do her food and homemaking program on the radio.
She resigned from the radio show in 1955 to devote work full time at to The Post’s food section. Under Lee’s direction, the paper’s food and homemaking coverage grew from a single page to a full-color section, which appeared on Thursdays.
She wrote that she collected recipes the way others collect stamps or coins. Lee retired in 1970. She is featured in my upcoming book, The Food Section: Newspaper Women and the Culinary Community.
