Diana Patience Beverly Ross (July 8, 1910 - May 4, 2000), relative of
Robert Ross, was an
English children's author and occasional and longtime resident of
Shaw, near
Melksham, in
Wiltshire. A graduate of the
Central School of Art in
London, she also worked on
sculpture and
graphic arts and
illustrated several of her own books under the name of her cat, Gri.
In her early twenties, Ross worked at the
Grenfell Mission orphanage in
St. Anthony and would later help
Wilfred Grenfell to research his history,
The Romance of Labrador, as well as, without credit, drawing the book's illustrations.
Beginning with
The Little Red Engine Gets a Name (1942), followed by
The Story of the Little Red Engine (1945) (ISBN 0-233-00147-6) and seven more volumes, Ross created a series of
picture books which followed the adventures of the same character.
Jan Lewitt and
George Him provided the illustrations for the first volume and
Leslie Wood its sequels.
Ross had several of her short works read alone for
BBC radio broadcasts for children and wrote several volumes of modern
fairy tales for older chldren. Ross also had an un-credited part in the creation of the BBC children's television series
Camberwick Green.
Suffering from
Alzheimer's Disease and
polyneuritis, she lived the last ten years of her life with her daughter and son-in-law in
Newcastle upon Tyne.
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