Daisy Ashford(1881-1972)

Margaret (Daisy) Ashford was born at Elm Lodge in Petersham, Surrey to a former War Office official, William Ashford, and his wife Emma in 1881. The majority of her schooling was done at home and she was encouraged to write, as were her sister and three brothers. Her first story "The Life of Father McSwiney" was dictated to her father when she was four years old (it remained unpublished for almost 100 years), and this was followed by "A Short Story of Love" in 1889 and "Mr. Chapmer's Bride" (now lost). Her most famous work "The Young Visiters" was written shortly afterwards and was the first book that she wrote herself rather than dictating the tale to another. She wrote a number of other stories and a play, "A Woman's Crime". She wrote "The Hangman's Daughter" during 1894-95, which she considered to be her best work, but when she went to school in 1898 her aspirations to be an authoress disappeared. Instead, Daisy left school and spent five years at home, before moving with her family, in 1904, to Bexhill, and then later to London, after her sister Vera. In London she worked as a secretary, and ran a canteen during the First World War, in Dover.

It was following her mother's death in 1917 that Daisy and her sisters discovered her original manuscript for "The Young Visiters", and her other childhood writings. Daisy gave the manuscript to a friend, Margaret Mackenzie, who then passed it on to an acquaintance, Frank Swinnerton, who was, at that time, working for Chatto and Windus publishers. "The Young Visiters" was finally published for the first time on 22nd May 1919, with a preface by J.M. Barrie. The authenticity of the story, written by a child, was questioned in some quarters, but it also had its admirers - among them A.A. Milne and Robert Graves . It was an immediate success, reprinted 18 times in it's first year, dramatised for the stage in 1920, adapted into a musical in 1968, and filmed twice, in 1984 and for television in 2003.

Daisy was always astonished by her new found fame, and saw her stories published in a volume called "Daisy Ashford: Her Book" in 1920 (which also included a tale by her sister Angela). Also in 1920 she married and settled in Norfolk, at one time running the King's Arms Hotel in Reepham. In 1939 they settled with her family in Hellesdon, Norwich where Daisy died on 15th January 1972. She did not write in the intervening years, although in old age she did begin an autobiography, which she later burned during spring cleaning. In 1983, her very first story "The Life of Father McSwiney" was published for the first time in a collection of her work, "The Hangman's Daughter and other stories" - 11 years after her death and almost 100 years after she dictated the tale to her father.