Charlotte Curtis; Pioneer Women’s News Editor of the New York Times

Charlotte Curtis, author, columnist and the editor of the New York Times credited with helping move women’s news into more mainstream areas, died of cancer on Thursday. She was 58 and had gone on medical leave as a columnist about a year ago to undergo surgery for a glandular condition, said Times spokesman Leonard Harris. The cancer was discovered at that time, he said.

Miss Curtis was women’s news editor at the Times from 1965 to 1972, family and style editor from 1972 to 1974 and associate editor and editor of the opposite-editorial commentary and opinion page from 1974 to 1982. As associate editor, she became the first woman to appear on the Times masthead.

Under her direction reporting on the feminist movement and such controversial issues as abortion replaced such traditional “women’s page” features as shopping and grooming.

Her first book, “First Lady,” an account of Jacqueline Kennedy’s first year in the White House, was published in 1965. She wrote “The Rich and Other Atrocities” in 1976, in which she quietly savaged some of the society dowagers whose parties she had covered over the years.