Young Visiters

Daisy (Margaret Mary Julia) Ashford was born in Petersham, Surrey in 1881, the eldest of the three daughters of William Ashford and the sixth child of his wife Emma. She dictated her first story, ‘The Life of Father McSwiney’, when she was four and finished her last ‘The Hangman's Daughter’ when she was fourteen. The Young Visiters was written in 1890 soon after the family moved to Lewes, Sussex. Daisy was thirty-six when The Young Visiters was rediscovered and it was published two years later in 1919. In the following January she married James Devlin and spent the rest of her life in Norfolk. They had four children. Although all five of her other stories that survived from her childhood were published, she never took up writing again. She died in January 1972. Posy Simmonds is the author of many books for adults and children, including Gemma Bovery, Lulu and the Flying Babies and Fred, the film of which was nominated for an Oscar. She has won international awards for her work, including the 2009 Grand prix de la critique bande dessinée for Tamara Drewe and the 2024 Grand Prix at France’s Angoulême International Comics festival for a lifetime's achievement. Both Gemma Bovery and Tamara Drewe have been made into successful feature films. Her third graphic novel, Cassandra Darke was published in 2018. She lives in London. Lucy Mangan is the TV critic for The Guardian, and a columnist, features writer and reviewer for Stylist magazine, The Telegraph and many other publications. She broadcasts frequently on radio and occasionally on television, and is the author of Bookworm, My Family and Other Disasters, The Reluctant Bride, Hopscotch and Handbags and Inside Charlie’s Chocolate Factory.

I adore The Young Visiters, with its delightful voice and exuberant spellings... A blissful book