Daisy Ashford

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Daisy Ashford was an avid writer as a child. She became famous when she rediscovered a novella she wrote at the age of nine, The Young Visiters, and it was published with a preface by J. M. Barrie , nearly thirty years later. She later published other juvenilia, mainly short stories, under her childhood name (though by then she was married), but did not pursue a career in writing as an adult.

Milestones

7 April 1881

Margaret Mary Julia Ashford (who wrote as DA ) was born at Elm Lodge in Petersham, Surrey, a house once inhabited by Dickens and now the home of her paternal grandmother and her aunt Julia Ashford .
Matthew, Henry Colin Gray et al., editors. Oxford Dictionary of National Biography. http://www.oxforddnb.com/.
Malcomson, R. M. Daisy Ashford: Her Life. Chatto & Windus.
43
“The Times Digital Archive 1785-2007”. Thompson Gale: The Times Digital Archive.
57319 (2 August 1968): 13

After 7 April 1890

Nine-year-old Daisy Ashford wrote out in her own handwriting the story which, when printed in 1919, made her a household name as a child author: The Young Visiters, or, Mr. Salteena's Plan.
Blain, Virginia et al., editors. The Feminist Companion to Literature in English: Women Writers from the Middle Ages to the Present. Yale University Press; Batsford.

Spring or later 1917

After her mother's death, DA came across a box of old papers and childhood memorabilia and rediscovered her juvenile stories, including The Young Visiters. She had written this in a little red notebook, which she had tucked away in a kitchen drawer for safekeeping.
Malcomson, R. M. Daisy Ashford: Her Life. Chatto & Windus.
96
Thorley, Kirsten Cubitt. “Daisy Ashford’s Young Visiters manuscript”. The Guardian.

22 May 1919

DA 's juvenile novella The Young Visiters (written in 1890, when she was just nine years old) was published by Chatto and Windus in London, with a preface by J. M. Barrie (author of Peter Pan).
OCLC WorldCat. http://www.oclc.org/firstsearch/content/worldcat/. Accessed 1999.
Matthew, Henry Colin Gray et al., editors. Oxford Dictionary of National Biography. http://www.oxforddnb.com/.

15 January 1972

Margaret Mary Devlin, who as a child had written as DA , died at Norwich. She had lived to be ninety years old.
Ancestry.co.uk. http://www.ancestry.co.uk.
Ashford, Daisy. The Young Visiters. George H. Doran Company.
110

Biography

Birth and Family

7 April 1881

Margaret Mary Julia Ashford (who wrote as DA ) was born at Elm Lodge in Petersham, Surrey, a house once inhabited by Dickens and now the home of her paternal grandmother and her aunt Julia Ashford .
Matthew, Henry Colin Gray et al., editors. Oxford Dictionary of National Biography. http://www.oxforddnb.com/.
Malcomson, R. M. Daisy Ashford: Her Life. Chatto & Windus.
43
“The Times Digital Archive 1785-2007”. Thompson Gale: The Times Digital Archive.
57319 (2 August 1968): 13