Bio:Angela Tonks

Angela Edith Tonks was was born in the midlands of England and "spent as much of her adult life as possible in travel." Early in her career, she wrote travel articles, was a caption writer, secretary and-teacher, engaged in interior decorating, ran textile showrooms and arranged displays in England. During World War II she worked in the London ambulance service. Angela, then a vacationing-secretary, met Wesley Eugene Baxter on the Spanish Island of Formentera, where Baxter had gone to paint. More travel intervened for both before they met again on the island and were married, a marriage followed by another in England "to make sure of the documentation of the certificate." By 1959 she is with her husband in Oregon, with a vacation home in Onalaska, Washington. Although she is now Angela Edith Baxter, she writes under her maiden name.

An interviewer wrote of her: This new novelist admits that at a very early age she began writing "dreadful poetry and all sorts of nonsense." Now her second book, and first to be published, seems on its way to a literary jackpot, having been published last October in England by Victor [Gollancz] and now in America by A. A. Knopf of New York. About Mrs. Baxter's new book and the one in the making, she explained her ideas come from a sense she has that everyone lives within his own world with different realities that can be mutually destructive while trying to be constructive."

Angela Edith (Tonks) Baxter died August 1, 2003, although the immediate obituary posted for her in their local paper gave a death date of Aug. 12. She and Wesley appear to have left no descendants.

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Sources:  The Daily Chronicle, Lewis County, Washington, July 21, 1959, Page 4.  The Daily Chronicle, Lewis County, Washington, April 8 1959, Page 4.  Social Security Death Master File for Social Security Number 542-48-3010. See also here.  The Daily Chronicle, Lewis County, Washington, Aug. 15, 2003. 