Ruby M. Ayres

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Ruby M. Ayres
Ayres in September 1933.
Ayres in September 1933.
BornRuby Mildred Ayres
(1881-01-28)28 January 1881
Watford, London, UK
Died14 November 1955(1955-11-14) (aged 74)
Weybridge, Surrey, UK
OccupationWriter
Period1912–55
GenreRomance
SpouseReginald William Pocock (1909–40s; his death)

Ruby Mildred Ayres (28 January 1881 – 14 November 1955) was a British romance novelist, "one of the most popular and prolific romantic novelists of the twentieth century".[1]

Personal life

Ayres was born in Watford on 28 January 1881, the third daughter of London-based architect Charles Pryor Ayres and his wife Alice (née Whitford).[1] In 1909 she married insurance broker Reginald William Pocock. She died on 14 November 1955 at home in Weybridge, Surrey, aged 74, of a combination of pneumonia and a cerebral thrombosis. She was cremated four days later at Golders Green in north London.

Career

Ayres stated that she had started to write as a girl, and said that she had been expelled at the age of 15 for the offence of writing what she described as "an advanced love story",

Hodder and Stoughton
, where she remained until her death in 1955. She wrote over 135 novels over her career, mostly for Hodder, as well as a number of serialised works.

She has been referred to as an "over-productive romance writer",[3] and was possibly an inspiration for the P. G. Wodehouse character Rosie M. Banks.[4] Wodehouse intentionally chose the name "Rosie M. Banks" to be similar to hers, stating in a 1955 letter to his biographer Richard Usborne that he "wanted a name that would give a Ruby M. Ayres suggestion".[5] Several of her works became films and she did screenwriting for Society for Sale[6] among others. She also corresponded with Douglas Sladen.[7]

In the late 1930s, she was targeted in a prospective study by

proto-Fascist in English writing,[8] perhaps because of her glorification of the wartime soldier-hero.[9] During the late 1930s, she wrote an advice column in the Oracle, complimented as "extremely sensible" by George Orwell in an essay on the media consumption of the working class
.

Partial bibliography

  • Castles in Spain (1912)
  • Richard Chatterton, V.C. (1915)
  • Paper Roses (1916)
  • The Black Sheep (1917)
  • The Second Honeymoon (1918)
  • The Girl Next Door (1919)
  • The Beggar Man (1920)
  • Master Man (1920)
  • A Bachelor Husband (1920)
  • The Second Honeymoon (1921)
  • The Uphill Road (1921)
  • The Street Below (1922)
  • The Man the Women Loved (1923)
  • The Romance of a Rogue (1923)
  • Ribbons and Laces (1924)
  • A Man of His Word (1926)
  • Spoilt Music (1926)
  • The Planter of the Tree (1927)
  • Heartbreak Marriage (1929)
  • Love Changes (1929)
  • Giving Him Up (1930)
  • In the Day's March (1930)
  • The Big Fellah (1931)
  • The Princess Passes (1931)
  • Changing Pilots (1932)
  • Look To the Spring (1932)
  • So Many Miles (1932)
  • By the World Forgot (1933)
  • Much Loved (1934)
  • All Over Again (1934)
  • Feather (1935)
  • Happy Endings (1935)
  • The Man in Her Life (1935)
  • Some Day (1935)
  • Compromise (1936)
  • Afterglow (1936)
  • Our Avenue (1936)
  • Somebody Else (1936)
  • Too Much Together (1936)
  • Owner Gone Abroad (1937)
  • The Sun and the Sea (1937)
  • Follow a Shadow (1937)
  • Unofficial Wife (1937)
  • Owner Gone Abroad (1937)
  • High Noon (1938)
  • One To Live With (1938)
  • Return Journey (1938)
  • There Was Another (1938)
  • Big Ben (1939)
  • The Moon in the Water (1939)
  • Weep for Love (1939)
  • The Tree Drops a Leaf (1939)
  • Little and Good (1940)
  • The Little Sinner (1940)
  • The Constant Heart (1941)
  • Little and Good (1941)
  • Lost Property (1943)
  • April's Day (1945)
  • Where Are You Going? (1946)
  • Young Shoulders (1947)
  • Missing the Tide (1948)
  • The Day Comes Round (1949)
  • Steering by a Star (1949)
  • The Man From Ceylon (1950)
  • The Man Who Lived Alone (1950)
  • Autumn Fires (1951)
  • The Story of Fish and Chips (1951)
  • Twice a Boy (1951)
  • One Sees Stars (1952)
  • One Woman Too Many (1952)
  • Love Without Wings (1953)
  • The Youngest Aunt (1954)

Filmography

References

  1. ^
    doi:10.1093/ref:odnb/45542. (Subscription or UK public library membership
    required.)
  2. ^ "Ruby M. Ayres". Orlando. Cambridge University Press. Retrieved 11 February 2018.
  3. ^ Redmond, Moira (27 March 2014). "Bad mothers in books: a literary litany". The Guardian.
  4. ^ Fergusson, James (1 June 2007). "Bibliography – Proofs, firsts and file copies". The Times Literary Supplement (5435): 28.
  5. ISBN 978-0786422883
    .
  6. ^ "Ruby Mildred Ayres Complete Filmography". Turner Classic Movies filmography.
  7. ^ "Guide to the Letters of Ruby M. Ayres, 1921-1923". Dartmouth College, Rauner Special Collections Library.
  8. ^ M. Green, The Children of the Sun (London 1977) p. 318
  9. ^ J. Onions, English Fiction and Drama of the Great War (1990) p. 32

External links

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