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Author Focus:

Norren Ford Dilcock

Fiction: Romantic Fiction

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Titles to Look Out For:
[in ascending order of date of publication (year) with each entry dated to earliest edition. Each listing includes later editions and printings]
1955. Beyond The Frost The Flower. Written as Jill Christian
1969. The Little Masters. Written as Christian Walford

About the Author:
Norren Ford Dilcock was born on the 28th March, 1907 in Kingston-upon-Hull, England and departed this world in 1985. Her young life was spent studying at Hull's French Convent, Ravensworth School and Appleton-le-Moors

During the course of her life, she wrote a good many mostly romantic novels under the pseudonyms of Jill Christian, Christian Walford and Norrey Ford.

The 'Christian' part of her pseudonyms probably comes from her marriage to James Louis Christian Dilcock (1911–2000), a Midland judge and lay preacher at Walsall's (in the West Midlands, England) St Paul's Church

Norren was a vice-president of the Romantic Novelists' Association and went on to be elected as their second Chairman (1963-1965)

• Beyond the Frost the Flower [top]
  Written as Jill Christian
  First published in 1955 in Great Britain by Mills and Boon in hardback, 189pp

Storyline: Frances and Lydia were sisters; Frances a pretty young widow with two adorable children, Lydia "the plain one," kinds and domesticated but apparently doomed to spinsterhood. Their interwoven love stories are set against the background of a Yorkshire moorland village in the long, hot days of summer

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• The Little Masters [top]
  Written as Christian Walford
  First published in 1969 in Great Britain by Hurst & Blackett in hardback, 183pp, no ISBN.

Contents: The story is romantic fiction and is set in the early 19th Century in Staffordshire, England. Some of the focus is on the leather industry in England at that time, specifically in and around Walsall in the West Midlands:

'A cart pulled in, piled with bloody, wagging hides straight from the slaughter-house. The carter shouted; a big dark man, accompanied by a boy of about Noah's age, ran forward and began dragging the load down. The man sorted the material into separate piles. The boy ran backwards and forwards, in and out of a high shed, trundling the hides on a barrow. He spat on his hands, grasped the handles and pushed with a grown-up air; but once, between loads, he took time off to feed the horse with a tit-bit out of his pocket.

The dark-faced man caught him, shouted, and smacked his ear sharply. The boy hopped in agony, rubbing the side of his face.'

Chapters:
Part One: The Green Country 1840
Part Two: The Black Country 1851-1855