What were you doing at nine years old?
Personally, I don’t remember much about being nine other than the fact that I was in fourth grade, I lived in Texas, and had a secret girlfriend that didn’t want anyone to know about us because all the other girls thought I was “weird” and she couldn’t handle being a social pariah if anyone found out.
Emotional. Trauma.
For young Daisy Ashford, it was the perfect year for her to write a best selling book.
In 1890, Daisy wrote The Young Visiters, a novella about the upper class society of late-1800s England. You know… just the thing all nine year olds concern themselves with.
The young English author also wrote a few other stories, a play, and a short novel titled The Hangman’s Daughter, which she would always considered her best work.
And then, at the age of 13, she stopped writing and forgot about her works completely, putting them away where they would sit, undisturbed for the next two decades.
It wasn’t until her mother died that Daisy and her two sisters came across the pencilled manuscript tucked away in a drawer while going through their mother’s belongings.
They showed the papers to a friend who passed it to an acquaintance in the publishing world who saw promise in the book. The Young Visiters was published in 1919, with a preface from Peter Pan author J.M. Barrie.
In the early 1900s that was like getting Rihanna to collab with you on your first single. It was huge.
In fact many people, in error, thought J.M. Barrie wrote The Young Visiters which may have helped it, in part, to become a best seller.
Regardless, the novel was well received by critics and consumers and it went to print in several editions. It was a smash hit!
In 1920 a few more of her stories were published, she got married and purchased a farm with her earnings.
She ended up having four kids with her husband, James Devlin, but she never released another completed work. Daisy started an autobiography later in life, but ended up destroyed it. She died in 1972 at the young age of 90.
She did leave us aspiring writers with some nice words of wisdom:
“I like fresh air and royalty cheques.”
–Margaret Mary Julia Devlin, aka Daisy Ashford, aka Queen Dai Dai (perhaps)
Boom. Mic drop.
