Ursula Torday

Ursula Joyce Torday was born on 19 February 1912 (in some sources wrongly 1888) in London, England, United Kingdom; her mother, Caira Rose Macdonell, was Scottish, and her father, Emil Torday (1875–1931) was a Hungarian anthropologist - they had married on 17 March 1910. She studied at Kensington High School in London before going to Oxford University, where she obtained a BA in English at Lady Margaret Hall College; she later achieved a Social Science Certificate at London School of Economics. ==Career==

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 (a.k.a. Young Lucifer); The Children (a.k.a. ''Wednesday's Children) is her memoir about her work with children of the Holocaust. She worked as a typist at the National Central Library (England and Wales) in London, inspiration for her future novel Dewey Death'' as Charity Blackstock. She also taught English to adult students. Writer She returned to publishing in the early 1950s using the pen names of Paula Allardyce or Charity Blackstock (in some cases reedited as Lee Blackstock in the USA) 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 (a.k.a. The Woman in the Woods) as Charity (or Lee) 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 ==Death==

Ursula Torday died on 6 March 1997, at 85. ==Bibliography==