Berta Ruck

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Primarily a romantic novelist, BR produced nearly eighty novels over the course of her writing career as well as large numbers of short stories. Her fiction focuses on young girls and love. She also produced an autobiography and four books of deliberately haphazard memoirs which pay loving tribute to Wales. Her career spanned all but about three decades of the twentieth century, during most of which she published an average higher than a book a year.
  • BirthName: Amy Roberta Ruck
  • Nickname: Berta
  • Married: Onions; Oliver
    Although BR reproduced fan mail referring to her as both Mrs Onions and Mrs Oliver in her first autobiographical volume, she published under the name Berta Ruck and was addressed by younger fellow-professionals as Miss Ruck. Her husband, who changed his name from Oliver Onions to George Oliver, kept the name Oliver Onions for his writing.
    Ruck, Berta. A Story-Teller Tells the Truth. Hutchinson, 1935.
    114, 309
    Matthew, Henry Colin Gray et al., editors. Oxford Dictionary of National Biography. http://www.oxforddnb.com/.
Charcoal portrait of Berta Ruck, circa 1920. She has short wavy hair and wears long rectangular earrings.

Milestones

2 August 1878

Amy Roberta (Berta) Ruck , the eldest of eight children, was born at Murree in Punjab, India.
Matthew, Henry Colin Gray et al., editors. Oxford Dictionary of National Biography. http://www.oxforddnb.com/.

1905

BR 's first story, about the life of an art student in Paris, was entitled Miss Grant's Preliminary Sketch; it appeared in The Idler (following some of her illustrations there).
Ruck, Berta. A Story-Teller Tells the Truth. Hutchinson, 1935.
87-88

May 1972

BR published Ancestral Voices, last in her series of autobiographical novels set in Wales, and the last publication of her long writing career.
The title comes from Coleridge 's Kubla Khan, whose eponymous ruler hears from far / Ancestral voices prophesying war.
British Books in Print. J. Whitaker and Sons, 1874–1987.
1973
British Library Catalogue. http://explore.bl.uk/primo_library/libweb/action/search.do?dscnt=0&tab=local_tab&dstmp=1489778087340&vid=BLVU1&mode=Basic&fromLo.

11 August 1978

BR died at the age of one hundred at Aberdovey, Merioneth, Wales.
Matthew, Henry Colin Gray et al., editors. Oxford Dictionary of National Biography. http://www.oxforddnb.com/.

Biography

Birth and Family

2 August 1878

Amy Roberta (Berta) Ruck , the eldest of eight children, was born at Murree in Punjab, India.
Matthew, Henry Colin Gray et al., editors. Oxford Dictionary of National Biography. http://www.oxforddnb.com/.

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