Ashford, Daisy (1881–1972)

British children's author. Born Margaret Mary Julia Ashford on April 7, 1881, in Petersham, Surrey, England;died in Hellesdon, Norwich, England, on January 15, 1972; daughter of William Henry Roxburghe and Emma Georgina (Walker) Ashford; married James Devlin, in 1920.

Author of Where Love Lies Deepest (1893); The Hangman's Daughter (1894); The Young Visiters (1919).

By the time she was ten, Daisy Ashford had written her greatest work, The Young Visiters. When it appeared nearly two decades later and achieved enormous success, Ashford had no interest in following it up nor in revealing her identity as its author.

Emma Walker was the mother of five when she and William Ashford, a civil servant in the War Office, married. William had also been married before. Together they had three more children, including Margaret Mary Julia Ashford, whom the family sometimes called Daisy. The eight children were educated at home by a governess or private tutor, and Ashford started making up stories when she was just four. Not yet able to write, she dictated to her father. The Life of Father McSwinney was her first known story (it was published in 1983, almost 100 years later, as part of a children's collection).

In 1889, the Ashfords moved to Lewes in Sussex, where Margaret continued to tell stories and penned—on her own—The Young Visiters at age eight. Though this novel was not published, two other books were, under the name Daisy Ashford. These works were modestly successful, as readers were charmed by the youthful narrator and the misspellings without realizing the author's age.

When Margaret Ashford was 17, she spent a year at the convent school Hayward's Heath, and then five more years at home, before she moved to London with her sister. As a secretary for the British Legation at Berne during World War I, Ashford spent time in Switzerland. When her mother Emma died, Margaret's early masterpiece was rediscovered among her papers. The Young Visiters was published in 1919, with an introduction by J.M. Barrie (author of Peter Pan). While Ashford maintained her anonymity, the book had 18 reprints in its first year, buoyed largely by the rumor that Barrie was the actual author. The following year, Margaret married James Devlin, with whom she had four children and ran a farm and a hotel near Norwich. She lived a quiet country life as her novel was made into a play, a musical, and a movie. James Devlin died in 1956. Ashford died 16 years later, in 1972, at age 90. Not until her death was her identity as the author of The Young Visiters revealed.

Crista Martin , Boston, Massachusetts