An Unlikely Editor

 I've been  reading Siegfried Sassoon's memoir of his early years, The Old Century (and a very good read it is).
Being born a Sassoon, Siegfried was vaguely aware that he had a lot of rich relations, but he saw nothing of them – with one exception, Auntie Rachel, his father's sister, who was Mrs Frederick Beer, and who lived with her husband in an oppressively grand Mayfair mansion.  There were footmen and a butler, electric lighting, expensive furnishings and antiques galore. In the grand dining room, 'The food was a series of succulent surprises, and there were wonderful pictures on the walls. But every time we went there the floor became more densely occupied by piles of books. They were stacked all around the room and none of them had ever been opened, though they ought to have been because they were, to be precise, review copies sent to the Sunday Times, of which Auntie Rachel was the editor.' This nugget caught me up short – how could Auntie Rachel, 'well known for always being late for everything' and described by Sassoon as 'vague and desultory', be editing a national newspaper? 
 Sassoon explains: 'At that time both The Observer and the Sunday Times, which in those days were rather unobtrusive and retiring newspaper, belonged to Mr Beer, whose father had been a financier.' What is more (as he doesn't mention), Auntie Rachel was also the editor of The Observer – and was indeed the first woman to edit a national newspaper. The world of journalism was obviously very different in the 1890s, but even the young Sassoon found it hard to believe that his aunt could be editing a paper: 'I have often wondered how the Sunday Times managed to appear once a week under her editorship. I have also wondered how the printers succeeded in deciphering her handwriting, which was the most illegible hieroglyphic I have ever puzzled over.' Despite her husband becoming increasingly ill, she continued to edit both papers until 1901. On Frederick Beer's death in 1903, the papers changed hands again. Rachel herself was ill for many years, and when she died she left a large bequest to her nephew Siegfried, with which he was able to buy Heytesbury House in Wiltshire, where he lived for the rest of his life, forever grateful to Auntie Rachel.