Hampson dreamed of teaching and writing when she was six, but due to the depression after
World War II, she had to leave her studies at fourteen and begin making blouses for
Marks & Spencer's. She left work when she married. She sold her sewing machine for £15 to the neighbour who later encouraged her to publish her first novel. Later, when her marriage broke up, she had to return to work and lived in a mobile home in the village of
Cuddington in Mid Cheshire. But, when
Manchester University decided to trial older women she applied and graduated. She wrote articles about her travels in Greece and they were published in various education magazines. She also had an interest in fossils and sometimes went to the
North Yorkshire coast to collect. Her first manuscript was a romance about Delphi where she had visited. This manuscript sat on a shelf in her mobile home until she showed it to Brice Burgum, a neighbour who said she should seek out an agent to get it published. ==Career==