Ruby Ferguson - Life and Career

Life and Career

Ferguson was born and raised in Reeth, North Yorkshire. Her father was a Wesleyan minister, and Ferguson herself later became a lay officer of the Methodist church. She received her education at Bradford Girls' Grammar School and then at St Hilda's College at the University of Oxford, where she read English from 1919 to 1922, gaining a normal BA and, a few years later, the Oxford MA. She then moved to Manchester and took a job as a secretary, supplementing her income by writing a regular column for the British Weekly, and by reading and reviewing books for a publisher. Her writing career began in earnest when she submitted some detective stories to a weekly competition in the Manchester Evening News. Her first full-length novel appeared in 1926, and she continued writing novels and stories under the name "R.C. Ashby" until the mid-1930s. In 1934 she married Samuel Ferguson, a widower with two sons. Three years later, she published Lady Rose and Mrs. Memmary, a romantic novel which proved very popular. Between 1949 and 1962 she attained her greatest success when she wrote the "Jill" books for her step-grandchildren, Libs, Sallie, and Pip. Her last book, Children at the Shop, is a fictionalised memoir of her childhood.