Helen Gurley Brown, whose...

...1962 book Sex and the Single Girl propelled her to fame and fortune, died at age 90. According to the Times: 

Perhaps none of these things — not the books, not the unabashed look of Cosmopolitan and its legion of imitators, not the giddy pleasure with which American women embraced sex without shame — would have happened quite as soon if Ms. Brown had heeded a single piece of advice. In 1962, just before “Sex and the Single Girl” was due to be published, she received a telegram from her mother. In an interview with CNN in 1998, Ms. Brown recalled its contents. 

“Dear Helen,” it read. “If you move very quickly, I think we can stop publication of the book.”