Winifred Foley was born on July 25, 1914. She began working at the age of 14 as a maid in various households, as a kitchen maid at a ladies' college in London, as a domestic help at a bed-and-breakfast, and as a waitress. In the early 1970s, she sent a draft of her early life to the office of BBC radio's Woman's Hour. Meetings with the radio show led to a 1973 Woman's Hour serial followed by a book, A Child in the Forest, which was published in 1974 and became the first of the Forest Trilogy. At the age of 86, she began writing romance novels including Village Fates, Prejudice and Pride, To Kill for Love, and Two Men and a Maiden. She died on March 21, 2009 at the age of 90.
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