The First Lady of Fleet Street

In the late nineteenth century, at a time when women were still denied the vote, Rachel Beer defied convention to take the helm first of The Observer, and then the Sunday Times, becoming the first woman ever to edit a national newspaper. It was to be over eighty years before Fleet Street would see the like again. Barred from the London Clubs and the Press Gallery of the House of Commons, Rachel nevertheless managed to make her formidable voice heard on both national and international political issues – including the notorious Dreyfus Affair. In public she was a rebel and a pioneer, yet behind the closed door of her study, Rachel's life was marked by strife. Her family, the Sassoons, had made their fortune in Indian opium and cotton and Rachel's marriage to Frederick Beer should have brought together two wealthy dynasties. Instead, it resulted in a deep family rift and years of heartbreak. Drawing on a wealth of original material, The First Lady of Fleet Street not only provides an important history of two venerable families, their origins and their rise to eminence, it also paints a vivid picture of a remarkable woman and of the times in which she lived.