Jane Grigson

Jane Grigson (née McIntire, 13 March 1928 – 12 March 1990) was an English cookery writer.

She was a long-time food columnist with The Observer, and won awards for her cookery books including Vegetable Book (1978) and Fruit Book (1982). She was made Cookery Writer of the Year in 1977 for her book English Food.

Heather Jane Mabel McIntire (later Jane Grigson) was born in Gloucester, Gloucestershire, and brought up in Sunderland, County Durham, where her father George Shipley McIntire was Town Clerk. She attended Sunderland Church High School and Casterton School, Casterton, Westmorland, then went on to Newnham College, Cambridge, where she read English. On graduating from university in 1949, she spent three months in Florence, Italy. After working in art galleries, she went into publishing, joining George Rainbird's company in 1953 as a picture researcher for the encyclopedic People, Places, Things and Ideas. The editor of the book was poet and critic Geoffrey Grigson (1905–85), whom she later married, becoming his third wife. Grigson subsequently worked as a translator, winning the John Florio prize in 1966 for her work with Father Kenelm Foster on the translation of Cesare Beccaria's On Crimes and Punishments (1966).

Grigson's growing interest in food and cooking led to the writing of her first book, Charcuterie and French Pork Cookery (1967), which was accorded the unusual honour for an English food writer of being translated into French. Elizabeth David read the book and was impressed by it, and recommended Grigson as a food columnist for The Observer, for whom she wrote a column from 1968 until her death in 1990. Her long-lasting association with the newspaper produced some of her most successful books, such as Good Things (1971) and Food With the Famous (1979). In 1973, Fish Cookery was published, followed by The Mushroom Feast (1975), a collection of recipes for cultivated, woodland, field and dried mushrooms. She received both the Glenfiddich Writer of the Year Award and the André Simon Memorial Fund Book Award for her Vegetable Book (1978) and for her Fruit Book (1982), and was voted Cookery Writer of the Year in 1977 for English Food.

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