Berta Ruck

Born Amy Roberta Ruck in Murree, Punjab, on August 2, 1878, she was the daughter of a British army officer and later grew up partly in Wales. She studied art in London and Paris before turning seriously to writing, and that visual training seems to have stayed with her in the bright, scene-setting quality of her fiction.

She began publishing stories in magazines in the early 1900s and went on to become one of the best-known romance writers of her day, producing more than 90 novels between 1905 and 1972. Alongside her fiction, she also wrote an autobiography and memoirs, building a long career that stretched across most of the 20th century.

She married the novelist Oliver Onions in 1909, and the two remained a notable literary couple for decades. Ruck lived to be 100, dying in Aberdyfi, Wales, on August 11, 1978, just days after her birthday.