Hilda Leyel

Hilda Leyel ( Wauton; 6 December 1880 – 15 April 1957), who wrote under the name Mrs. C. F. Leyel, was an expert on herbalism and founded the Society of Herbalists (later the Herb Society) in England in 1927, as well as a chain of herbalist stores called the Culpeper House herb shops. among other works on the subject, as well as the cookery book The Gentle Art of Cookery. She was a fellow of the Royal Institution and an officer of the Académie Française. a fee-charging independent school for boys where her father Edward Wauton was a teacher. While still young, she developed a precocious interest in herbs and flowers and after leaving school studied medicine. She worked briefly with Frank Benson, who was an actor-manager.

Later career and personal life In 1900, at the age of 19, she married Carl Frederick Leyel, a theatrical manager five years her senior. The couple had two sons. (Carl remarried to Nancy Mary Manfield the following year, but it was a short marriage as he was thrown from a horse in 1925 and died as a result of the injuries.) a non-profit organization, for the study and application of herbalism. The society later became the Herb Society, a registered educational charity. Although Elizabeth David praised Leyel's writing, which she described as "fresh and alluring", she questioned whether the recipes would work, describing them as "sketchy in the extreme" and "another manifestation of the English love affair with Eastern food and Arabian Nights Ingredients". The Magic of Herbs The Truth About Herbs Jams The magic of herbs: A modern book of secrets ''