Born: 5 October 1858, United States
Died: 23 August 1949
Country most active: United States, International
Also known as: Helen Churchill Hungerford
American author, journalist, interior decorator, feminist, and geographer Helen Churchill Candee is best known best known for surviving the sinking of Titanic in 1912, and her work as a travel writer and explorer of southeast Asia. Her first book, 1900’s How Women May Earn a Living, was a best-seller, followed by her 1901 novel An Oklahoma Romance, which promoting settlement in the Oklahoma Territory. In Washington, D.C., she was one of the first professional interior decorators, with a client list that included then-Secretary of War Henry Stimson and President Theodore Roosevelt and a 1906 book, Decorative Styles and Periods.
All told, Candee published eight books, four on the decorative arts, two travelogues, one instructional, and her Oklahoma honvel. Her most successful was 1912’s The Tapestry Book, republished in many editions. As a journalist, she wrote fiction for women’s interest magazines like Good Housekeeping, Harper’s Bazaar, The Ladies’ Home Journal, and Woman’s Home Companion, wrote about art art, culture and design for American Homes, American Magazine of Art and International Studio and contributed to leading literary and political journals of the day such as Atlantic Monthly, The Century, Forum, Metropolitan, and Scribner’s. She was a trustee for the Corcoran Gallery of Art, a member of the Archeological Society and the American Federation of Arts and a board member of the National Woman Suffrage Association’s Washington chapter.