Daisy Ashford Biography

British child author, born in Petersham, Surrey. She is primarily known for The Young Visiters, the short society novel which she wrote at the age of nine. The notebook containing the novel was rediscovered by her in adult life and sent by a friend to Frank Swinnerton. Published in 1919 by Chatto and Windus, with its original misspellings and an arch introduction by J. M. Barrie, it was an immediate bestseller. Its child's view of high society (dukes and earls having ‘levies’ in ‘Crystall Pallace’) and its heavily romantic plot make it an engaging and enduring popular work. It appeared in an illustrated edition with pictures by Ralph Steadman in the 1960s and was turned into a play in 1920, and into a musical in 1968. In 1965 Love and Marriage, which contained two stories by her and one by her sister Angela, also had some success.