Ruth Gallard Ainsworth (16 October 1908 – 16 May 1984) was a British writer, of over seventy children's books and numerous radio scripts.
Life
Ainsworth was born in Manchester, in 1908, the second child (and first daughter) of Methodist minister Rev. Percy Clough Ainsworth and Gertrude Fisk of
Pendleton, her older brother being mycologist
Geoffrey Clough Ainsworth.
Ainsworth's father died on 1 July 1909 from typhoid aged 36. Soon after the family moved to 2 High Cliff Villas, Cobbold Road, Felixstowe. Ainsworth enrolled at
Ipswich High School,
Woolverstone
Woolverstone is a small village and civil parish in Suffolk, England located on the Shotley peninsula. It is situated about south of Ipswich, near the southern shore of the River Orwell. In 2005 it had a population of 240, where she studied between September 1924 and July 1926.
She later attended the Froebel Training Centre in Leicester.
On 29 March 1935 she married chemist Frank Lathe Gilbert in Leicester. On 7 September 1936, while in Lancaster, she gave birth to twin sons:
Christopher Gallard Gilbert (furniture historian and museum curator) and
Oliver Lathe Gilbert (urban ecologist and lichenologist). She had a third son Richard Frank Gilbert.
The Gilberts initially settled in London, but their house was bombed in World War II. They relocated to
Porthmadog
Porthmadog (), originally Portmadoc until 1972 and known locally as "Port", is a coastal town and community (Wales), community in the Eifionydd area of Gwynedd, Wales, and the historic counties of Wales, historic county of Caernarfonshire. It li ...
. Latterly the Gilberts lived in
Corbridge
Corbridge is a village in Northumberland, England, west of Newcastle upon Tyne, Newcastle and east of Hexham. Villages nearby include Halton, Northumberland, Halton, Acomb, Northumberland, Acomb, Aydon and Sandhoe.
Etymology
Corbridge was k ...
, Northumberland.
Ainsworth died in 1984 aged 75. Her ashes were scattered in a stream in
Wasdale
Wasdale (; traditionally ) is a valley and civil parish in the western part of the Lake District National Park in Cumbria, England. The River Irt flows through the valley to its estuary at Ravenglass. A large part of the main valley floor is ...
.
Work
Ainsworth re-told classic fairy tales, as well as new stories of her own.
Ainsworth was a scriptwriter for ''
Listen with Mother
''Listen with Mother'' was a BBC radio programme for children which ran between 16 January 1950 and 10 September 1982. It was originally produced by Freda Lingstrom although for the majority of its run it was produced by George Dixon, and was p ...
'', a popular BBC children's programme.
Some were published as .
Some of her stories were televised as marionette plays.
Bibliography
The series "Books for me to read", written with
Ronald Ridout, has the secondary title "A book for me to read" on each cover.
It is not clear if the color sub-series ("Red book 1" etc.) is used throughout its history. Some or all of the books were republished with slightly different titles, for example ''Pony Pony'' (London: Bancroft, 1965) as ''Pony, pony : my sixth reading book'' (Bristol: Purnell, 1983) while still in "Books for me to read. Blue series." Most or all of these books were published in the
initial teaching alphabet
The Initial Teaching Alphabet (ITA or i.t.a.) is a variant of the Latin alphabet developed by Sir James Pitman (the grandson of Sir Isaac Pitman, inventor of a system of shorthand) in the early 1960s. It was not intended to be a strictly phonetic ...
.
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References
External links
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{{DEFAULTSORT:Ainsworth, Ruth
1908 births
1984 deaths
English women children's writers
People educated at Ipswich High School, Suffolk
People from Felixstowe
Writers from Manchester
Writers from Suffolk