Ursula Torday (/ˈtɔːrdeɪ/; 19 February 1912 in London, England – 6 March 1997), was a British writer of some 60 gothic, romance and mystery novels from 1935 to 1982.
In 1961, her novel Witches' Sabbath won the Romantic Novel of the Year Award by the Romantic Novelists' Association[1] Ursula Joyce Torday was born on 19 February 1912 (in some sources wrongly 1888) in London, England, United Kingdom; her mother, Gaia Rose Macdonald, was Scottish, and her father, Emil Torday (1875–1931) was a Hungarian anthropologist - they had married on 17 March 1910.
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.
She worked as a typist at the National Central Library (England and Wales) in London,[5] inspiration for her future novel Dewey Death as Charity Blackstock.