Ursula Bloom

Ursula Bloom (11 December 1892-29 October 1984) used to be in the Guiness Book of Records as the most prolific authoress in the world. She published 420 full-length books, the first of which, The Great Beginning, was published in 1922. She also wrote under the pen names Sheila Burns, Mary Essex and the unlikely-sounding Lozania Prole. Most were romantic novels, but she also wrote several autobiographical books:

• Trilogy (Hutchinson, 1954)
• Life is No Fairy Tale (Robert Hale, 1976)
• Rosemary for Stratford-on-Avon
• Rosemary for Chelsea
• A Roof and Four Walls (Hutchinson, 1967)
• The Mightier Sword (Robert Hale, 1966)

and two books that relate (rather inaccurately) some of the history of her ancestors:

• Parson Extraordinary (primarily about her father, James Harvey Bloom, a clergyman who was interested in his family history, and two of whose notebooks are in the library of the Society of Genealogists in London) (Robert Hale, 1963)
• The Rose of Norfolk (about James Harvey Bloom's ancestry) (Robert Hale, 1964)

She married Arthur Brownlow Denham-Cookes, a Captain in the 24th London Regiment (Queen's) in 1916, but he died in 1918. Ursula Bloom then married Charles Gower Robinson, a Paymaster Commander in the Royal Navy, in 1925. He died in 1979.

Here are some photographs of Ursula Bloom and her family. Other photographs of the Bloom family (earlier generations) can be found on the Bloom family photographs page (clink on the link in the panel to the left of this screen)

Ursula Bloom, aged 5 and her brother Joscelyn, aged 3

Two photographs of Ursula Bloom with her second husband, Charles Gower Robinson:

If you have old copies of any of Ursula Bloom's books that you plan to discard - especially her biographical ones - I would be very interested in having them, and would be willing to pay the postage costs. Please email me to discuss this (please go to my Freewire site for details of how to email me: click on the link at the top of the page).