Ruth Ainsworth (1908–1984)

Ruth Ainsworth was born in Manchester, England, a daughter of Rev. Percy Clough Ainsworth,a Methodist minister, and his wife Gertrude Fisk. Her father died from typhoid when she was a baby, and the family moved to Felixstowe. She was educated at Ipswich High School, Woolverstone, and later attended the Froebel Training Centre in Leicester. In 1935, she married chemist Frank Lathe Gilbert, with whom she had three sons. They initially settled in London, but their house was bombed during World War II, and they relocated to Porthmadog in North Wales. Ruth re-told classic fairy tales, and also wrote dozens of new stories in popular books published between 1936 and 1989. She worked as a scriptwriter for "Listen with Mother," a popular children's program on the BBC. Some of these scripts were published as Ruth Ainsworth's Listen with Mother Tales. See http://www.ruthainsworth.co.uk/