Dr. Ellie Reed is a Lecturer in English at Brunel University of London and an expert in early-to-mid twentieth-century popular women's magazines within wider literary culture. Published by Liverpool University Press in 2023, her book, Woman's Weekly and Lower Middle-Class Domestic Culture in Britain, 1918–1958, was described as "a major contribution" to its field. A keen knitter, her current research explores how women's magazines popularized knitting and knitwear in Britain before 1960.
During the First World War, knitting for soldiers was patriotic. Less remembered is the mother at home, urged by popular magazines to knit not only for the trenches but for the cradle, too.
