Barbara Murray Schilling, 77, a longtime Philadelphia writer who as Barbara Holland penned 15 nonfiction books such as Endangered Pleasures: In Defense of Naps, Bacon, Martinis, Profanity, and Other Indulgences, died of lung cancer Tuesday, Sept. 7, at her home in Bluemont, Va., where she had lived since 1993.
“She’s a wisp of a woman with short white hair and a face that’s weather-beaten enough to be called craggy,” a Washington Post interviewer wrote after a 2007 visit to her home in rural Loudoun County.
“She has just published her 15th book. It’s called_The Joy of Drinking_, and, as the title suggests, it’s a lighthearted history of humanity’s long romance with strong liquids.”
As a Mother’s Day trifecta, the reporter wrote, “she jokes that stores should sell The Joy of Drinking in a gift package with The Joy of Cooking and The Joy of Sex.”
As Barbara Holland, she had sold “lots and lots” of short stories to magazines such as Redbook and Ladies’ Home Journal in the 1950s, but in Philadelphia she became an advertising copywriter, too.
Mrs. Schilling worked for Domsky & Simon, an ad agency at 734 Pine St., which accommodated her “when my mother would want to take some time off or go off and live in Denmark for six months,” her daughter said.
She sometimes worked from home, but when she kept office hours, the firm “allowed her to not have to worry about child care. She could bring me along, and she did.”