Joan M. Allen

April 12, 1908 ~ December 3, 2013 (105)
Ida Crowe was born on 12 April 1908 in Lewisham, Kent, England, the daughter of a single mother and a unknown father, that rumoured to be a Russian duke, who her mother met at a ball in Greenwich. From narrowly escaping being smothered with a pillow by the nurse who attended her birth, she traveled to Morocco alone as a teenager after suffering a mental breakdown. She began to write while still at school encouraged by her mother, and at 20, she sold her first three novels to George Newnes, where she met her future husband, Hugh Alexander Pollock, married with Enid Blyton, and divorced to Marion Atkinson. Nearly fifteen years after, he divorced, and they married on October 1943. In 1950, her husband had to declare bankruptcy, and she decided to write popular contemporary romances, and after her success, she also wrote historical romances and other type of books. She is also a recognised oil painter and makes model houses.