Elinor M. Brent-Dyer was a renowned English novelist, born as Gladys Eleanor May Dyer on April 6, 1894, in South Shields, Northumberland, England. She is best known for her historical fiction novels and children's books, particularly the long-running Chalet School series. Brent-Dyer was born to Eleanor Watson Rutherford and Charles Morris Brent Dyer, but her father abandoned the family when she was three years old. After her father's death in 1913, her mother remarried, and Brent-Dyer received her initial education from a small private school in South Shields. At the age of 18, she returned to the same school to teach, following her training at the Training College in Leeds. Brent-Dyer spent 36 years in the teaching field, working in various private and state schools in Middlesex, Hampshire, northeast, and Hereford.
Brent-Dyer's teaching career provided her with the inspiration and experience for her writing. She adopted the name Elinor Mary Brent-Dyer in the early 1920s and began writing full-time. Her first book, 'Gerry Goes to School,' was published in 1922, and her first Chalet School story, 'The School at the Chalet,' followed in 1925. Brent-Dyer's writing was influenced by her travels, including a holiday she spent in the Austrian Tyrol, which provided the inspiration for the first location in the Chalet School series. In 1930, Brent-Dyer converted to Roman Catholicism, and in 1933, she moved to Hereford, where she started her own school, The Margaret Roper School, in 1946. She ran the school until 1948, when she devoted most of her time to writing. Brent-Dyer passed away on September 20, 1969, but her legacy lives on through her Chalet School series, which remains popular and in print to this day.