Daisy Ashford: Her Book

A collection of the remaining stories dictated to her father by Ashford as a child, including Daisy's "most imposing novel", The Hangman's Daughter, together with The Jealous Governes by her eight-year-old sister Angela Ashford, and a preface by Irvin S Cobb. Daisy Ashford was something of a juvenile prodigy. She dictated and wrote lengthy, detailed stories (using somewhat creative spelling) from the time she was four, and finished her last opus when she was fourteen. The Young Visitors, her first novel was described as a "classic story of life and love in Victorian England as seen through the nursery window" was completed in 1890, when Ashford was about nine. It lay forgotten until 1917, when it was rediscovered and was published in 1919, compete with a preface by J M Barrie (the author of Peter Pan) and became an instant best seller.