Ruby Mildred Ayres (28 January 1881 – 14 November 1955) was a Britishromance novelist, "one of the most popular and prolific romantic novelists of the twentieth century".[1]
Ayres was born inWatford on 28 January 1881, the third daughter ofLondon-based architect Charles Pryor Ayres and his wife Alice (née Whitford).[1] In 1909 she married insurance broker Reginald William Pocock. She died on 14 November 1955 at home inWeybridge,Surrey, aged 74, of a combination of pneumonia and a cerebral thrombosis. She was cremated four days later atGolders Green in north London.
Ayres stated that she had started to write as a girl, and said that she had been expelled at the age of 15 for the offence of writing what she described as "an advanced love story",[1] although there is no corroboration for her claim. Her first story was published in a magazine shortly after her marriage in 1909, and in 1912 she published her first novel,Castles in Spain. In September 1915, with her first popular success,Richard Chatterton, V.C. (which sold over 50,000 copies in the first three years),[2] she moved publishing houses toHodder and Stoughton, where she remained until her death in 1955. She wrote over 135 novels over her career, mostly for Hodder, as well as a number of serialised works.
She has been referred to as an "over-productive romance writer",[3] and was possibly an inspiration for theP. G. Wodehouse characterRosie M. Banks.[4] Wodehouse intentionally chose the name "Rosie M. Banks" to be similar to hers, stating in a 1955 letter to his biographerRichard Usborne that he "wanted a name that would give a Ruby M. Ayres suggestion".[5] Several of her works became films and she did screenwriting forSociety for Sale[6] among others. She also corresponded withDouglas Sladen.[7]
In the late 1930s, she was targeted in a prospective study byW. H. Auden - alongside such figures asJohn Buchan andHenry Williamson - as representative of theproto-Fascist in English writing,[8] perhaps because of her glorification of the wartime soldier-hero.[9] During the late 1930s, she wrote an advice column in the Oracle, complimented as "extremely sensible" byGeorge Orwell in an essay on the media consumption of theworking class.
