The Mistress in Black by Rosemary Timperley

<p>Rosemary Timperley was born in 1920 in North London and died in November 1988. Her father was an architect and her mother a teacher. Timperley went to her local girls school and became a teacher herself. </p><p>She taught English and History in a state school. Her pupils said she was a very dramatic figure (she ran the drama club) and wore long swirling black dresses with long drop or hoop earrings.</p><p>In 33 years, she published 66 novels and several hundred short stories. However, her ghost stories are the ones that people remember the most. </p><p>She was editor of various editions of the Pan Ghost Book, including the 5th. This story The Mistress In Black was taken from that book published 1969.</p><p>Many of her short stories were published in magazines such as The New Yorker, Harper&apos;s Bazaar, and The Atlantic Monthly. Timperley&apos;s work often dealt with supernatural and paranormal themes, and she was considered a master of the ghost story genre. She also wrote several non-fiction books and articles on subjects such as writing and the supernatural. Timperley passed away in 1988.</p><p>While she was a teacher she began to submit her stories to magazine and they began to be accepted. She became a staff writer and agony aunt on the magazine Reveille. She lived in Richmond, Surrey  for many years. Many of her stories are set in London.</p><p>During the Second World War she worked at the Citizens’ Advice Bureau in Kensington, London. She got married to a Physics teacher in 1952 and they lived in Essex just outside London. They separated in the early 1960s according to some sources, but they appear to have been officially married until his death in 1968.</p><p>Timperley managed to travel widely across the world despite her hectic writing schedule, visiting Italy (a number of her works are set in Venice), Morocco, Belgium, Russia, and Greece. </p><p>Timperley&apos;s publisher, Robert Hale, stated that her first-hand knowledge of other nations and diversified work experience inspired her novels, plays, a