Ida Pollock

Ida was born near London in 1908. From the age of ten, she knew she wanted to write. She began writing fiction when she was in her very early teens, soon her stories were in major magazines and before she was twenty had several short novels in print.

Amongst the many interesting figures she met through her work was Major Hugh Pollock, who was then a book editor with the publisher George Newnes, they met when she visited the publisher's office. At that time he was married to the children's writer Enid Blyton. A later chance encounter with him, in the dark days at the beginning of World War II, was to change her life. Hugh was back in the army and Commandant of a school for Home Guard officers. Feeling Ida should be out of London, he offered her a post as civilian secretary. She accepted, and as the months went by their relationship intensified. In May 1942, he was sent overseas and Ida came close to being killed by a bombing raid. The following year, however, andsoon after his divorce, they were married in London's battered Guild hall register office. Soon they had a daughter, Rosemary Pollock, also a romance writer.

After the war, her husband experienced problems, mostly financial, and a determined Ida plunged back into her literary work, starting to write romances for Mills & Boon. With the production of ten or twelve titles in every year, it was not long before she was writing contemporany romances for five publishers under six pseudonyms and becoming hugely popular right across the world. In the later 60's, Ida became little disenchanted with contemporary romantic fiction and decided to write some historical romances. The success of five of her Regency novels prompted Mills & Boon to set up their Masquerade series and she became one of their four founding writers. Ida once explained her multiple identities in terms of being in print with several major international publishers at the same time. At that time, the pseudonyms were registered by the publishers and not by the writers. Ida has more than a hundred widely published novels as her married name and under her numerous pseudonyms.

During her marriage with Hugh, Ida travelled widely and lived in many parts of England. After her husband's death in Malta in 1971, she also lived abroad for several years, travelling between Switzerland (which she loved), Italy, France, Ireland and Malta.

Pollock carried on working after her centenary by dictating her stories to her daughter Rosemary at their home near Looe, Cornwall.