Ida Pollock
| Ida Julia Crowe Pollock | |
|---|---|
| Born | Ida Julia Crowe 12 April 1908 Lewisham, Kent, England |
| Died | 3 December 2013 (aged 105) Lanreath, Cornwall, UK |
| Pen name | Ida Crowe, Joan M. Allen, Susan Barrie, Pamela Kent, Averil Ives, Anita Charles, Barbara Rowan, Jane Beaufort, Rose Burghley, Mary Whistler, Ida Pollock, Marguerite Bell |
| Occupation | Novelist |
| Nationality | British |
| Period | 1922–2013 |
| Genre | Romance |
| Spouse | Hugh Alexander Pollock (1943–1971) |
| Children | Rosemary Pollock (b. 1944) |
| Website | |
| www |
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Ida Julia Pollock, née Crowe (12 April 1908 – 3 December 2013), was a British writer of several short-stories and over 125 romance novels that were published under her married name, Ida Pollock, and under a number of different pseudonyms: Joan M. Allen; Susan Barrie, Pamela Kent, Averil Ives, Anita Charles, Barbara Rowan, Jane Beaufort, Rose Burghley, Mary Whistler and Marguerite Bell. She has sold millions of copies over her 90-year career. She has been referred to as the "world's oldest novelist" who was still active at 105 and continued writing until her death. On the occasion of her 105th birthday, Pollock was appointed honorary vice-president of the Romantic Novelists' Association, having been one of its founding members.
Ida and her husband, Lt Colonel Hugh Alexander Pollock, DSO (1888–1971), a veteran of war and Winston Churchill's collaborator and editor, had a daughter, Rosemary Pollock, who is also a romance writer. Ida's autobiography, Starlight, published on 2009 at 100 years, tells the story of the start of her career, her marriage, and the relation of her husband with his ex-wife Enid Blyton.
She was also an oil painter, who was selected for inclusion in a national exhibition in 2004, at the age of 96.
Born Ida Julia Crowe on 12 April 1908 in Lewisham, Kent, England, United Kingdom, she was the daughter of Fanny Osborn, whose father was an architect in Victorian London, and her husband Arthur Crowe, but Pollock claimed to be illegitimate. Still unmarried, her mother began an affair with a supposed Russian Duke, but, after her parents death, her mother married Arthur Crowe, an old widower with a distant connection of Lord Nelson. A year or so later her mother resumed her affair with her Russian lover and became pregnant, but her daughter obtained her husband's surname. Her mother lived alone when Pollock was born, and she narrowly escaped being smothered with a pillow by the nurse who attended her birth. Her mother had a difficult time raising her and she was almost adopted by a rich uncle.
Encouraged by her mother, she began to write while still at school. At 14, she published her first thriller, The Hills of Raven's Haunt.
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