Ursula Torday


Ursula Torday, was a British writer of some 60 gothic, romance and mystery novels from 1935 to 1982. She also used the pseudonyms of Paula Allardyce, Charity Blackstock, Lee Blackstock, and Charlotte Keppel. In 1961, her novel Witches' Sabbath won the Romantic Novel of the Year Award by the Romantic Novelists' Association

Biography

Early years

Ursula Joyce Torday was born on 19 February 1912 in London, England, United Kingdom, daughter of mixed parentage, her mother Gaia Rose Macdonald, was Scottish, and her father Emil Torday was a Hungarian anthropologist, they married on 17 March 1910.
She studied at Kensington High School in London, before she went to Oxford University, where she obtained a BA in English at Lady Margaret Hall College, and later a Social Science Certificate at London School of Economics.

First jobs

In the 1930s, she published her first three novels under her real name: Ursula Torday.
During World War II, she worked as a probation officer for the Citizen's Advice Bureau. During the next seven years she also ran a refugee scheme for Jewish children, an inspiration for several of her future novels such as The Briar Patch ; The Children is her memoir about her work with children of the Holocaust. She worked as a typist at the National Central Library in London, inspiration for her future novel Dewey Death as Charity Blackstock. She also taught English to adult students.

Writing career

She returned to publishing in the early 1950s using the pen names of Paula Allardyce or Charity Blackstock to sign her gothic romance and mystery novels. Later, she also used the pen name Charlotte Keppel. She published her last novel in 1982.
Her novel Miss Fenny as Charity Blackstock was nominated for an Edgar Award. In 1961, her novel Witches' Sabbath won the Romantic Novel of the Year Award by the Romantic Novelists' Association
Ursula Torday died on 6 March 1997, at 85.

As Ursula Torday