The Phantom Lover

Ruby Mildred Ayres was born on 28 January 1881, in Watford,Hertfordshire, the third daughter of the marriage formed by Alice (néeWhitford) and Charles Pryor Ayres, a London-based architect. In 1909,she married Reginald William Pocock, a insurance broker, and theylived in Harrow until his death in a train accident. As widow withoutchildren, she moved to her sister’s home at Weybridge, Surrey.She started to write as a girl, and her first story was published in amagazine shortly after her marriage, and in 1912, she published her firstnovel, Castles in Spain. In September 1915, with her first popular success,Richard Chatterton, V.C. (which sold over 50,000 copies in the firstthree years), she moved publishing houses to Hodder and Stoughton,where she remained until her death in 1955. She wrote over 150 novelsand serialized works. Several of her works became films and she didscreenwriting for Society for Sale among others. She correspondedwith Douglas Sladen, and also was possibly an inspiration for theP. G. Wodehouse character Rosie M. Banks. She died on 14 November1955 in a nursing home in Weybridge, aged 74, of a combination ofpneumonia and a cerebral thrombosis. She was cremated four days laterat Golders Green in north London.