Ruby Ferguson

R. C. (Ruby Constance) Ashby (later Ruby Ferguson) was born in Yorkshire in 1899. She was educated at the Girls’ Grammar School, Bradford, and matriculated at St Hilda’s, Oxford in 1919, from which she graduated in 1922 with a degree in English Literature. Before she began her literary career, Ashby worked in a variety of jobs, including secretary, teacher, journalist, book reviewer, and publisher’s reader. Her first novel was published in 1926 and she went on to write a total of eight novels under the name R. C. Ashby between 1926 and 1934, the best-known of which are *He Arrived at Dusk* (1933) and *Out Went the Taper* (1934). After her marriage to Samuel Ferguson in 1934, she published exclusively under her married name, and her works underwent a complete change of style. Her next book, *Lady Rose and Mrs. Memmary* (1937), a romantic novel, was popular and well-received and was said to be a favourite of the Queen Mother. She continued to publish a number of romantic novels but was best known for her series of “Jill” books for children, which have remained almost continuously in print since the first “Jill” book appeared in 1949. Later in life, Ferguson and her husband moved to Jersey, where she died in 1966.