Forgotten Authors: Pauline Ashwell
Pauline Whitby was born in Hatfield, Hertfordshire on January 25, 1926 to the headmaster and headmistress of Merchant Taylors’ School in Ashwell, the village from which she would gain her pseudonym. Whitby had a younger sister named Marie. Both of them attended the school their parents ran.
Whitby began publishing in 1941 when she was 15 years old, with the chapbook Little Red Steamer, a fantasy for children, which published by Methuen under the pseudonym Pauline Ashwell.
In July of 1942, her story “Invasion from Venus” appeared in the British magazine Yankee Science Fiction. She used the pseudonym Paul Ashwell for the story. Later, her first novelette, “Unwillingly to School” appeared in Astounding under her most famous pseudonym, Pauline Ashwell and earned her a Hugo nomination. Nine months later, her story “Big Sword” also appeared in Astounding, but again as by Paul Ash.