Ruby Constance Annie Ashby was born in Hebden Bridge and raised in Reeth, North Yorkshire.

She then moved to Manchester and took a job as a secretary, supplementing her income by writing a regular column for the British Weekly.

[2] Her writing career began in earnest when she submitted some detective stories for a weekly competition in the Manchester Evening News.

[2] On 1 March 1934, she married Samuel Ferguson, a widower and electrical engineer[2] with two sons at the Water Lane Methodist Church, in Wilmslow.

Three years later, she published Lady Rose and Mrs. Memmary as Ruby Ferguson, a romantic novel that became her greatest success, which was republished in 2004 by Persephone Books.

[3] After its original publication, The Queen Mother is reported to have enjoyed the book so much that she invited Ruby Ferguson to dinner at Buckingham Palace.

[citation needed] Between 1949 and 1962 she gained great popularity with the "Jill" books for her step-grandchildren, Libs, Sallie, and Pip.

With hard work and the expert assistance of Martin Lowe, a wheelchair-using former Royal Air Force pilot, Jill becomes a star of Chatton equitation.

Jill is an active, independent and witty character who defies post-war expectations for English girls by scorning ladylike pursuits, treating boys her own age as equals, and working hard to achieve her goals.

Personally I thought (a) it was impossible to picture Mrs Pyke as a child at all, and (b) that curls down to your waist must have looked pretty awful all waving in the breeze like floating cork-screws....

'You mean, if she had two eyes she'd be riding like a centaur,' said Martin, and we all laughed as we munched our sandwiches and put away a lot of ice cream.

However, Blue Smoke gets desperately ill in the middle of the night, and Jill is called up to the riding school to help get the vet, along with Wendy.