Ruby Constance Annie Ferguson was born Ruby Ashby in Yorkshire in 1899. Her father was the Reverend David Ashby, a Wesleyan minister, and Ferguson herself later became a lay officer of the Methodist church.

Ruby attended Bradford Girls Grammar School, and later read English at St Hilda’s College, Oxford.

After Oxford she lived in Manchester, working as a secretary, and wrote a column for British Weekly as well as being a publisher’s reader and book reviewer. She wrote detective stories for magazines and in the late twenties and early thirties published several thrillers in book form.

In 1934, she married Samuel Ferguson and soon after began writing romantic novels. Apricot Sky, her sixth work in the genre, was published in 1952.

Between 1949 and 1962 she wrote nine pony books for children, featuring the series character Jill, while continuing to publish novels for adults. Her final work was Children at the Shop, a partly fictionalised memoir.

Ruby Ferguson died in 1966.