Elinor Brent-Dyer - Short Biography

Short Biography

Elinor M. Brent-Dyer was born Gladys Eleanor May Dyer on 6 April 1894. She was the only daughter of Eleanor Watson Rutherford and Charles Morris Brent Dyer. Gladys had a half-brother, Charles Arnold Lloyd Dyer, who was a product of Charles Morris Brent Dyer's first marriage to Helen May Arnold. Several accounts have declared at this point that Charles Arnold "never lived with his father", but he is shown on the Census with Charles senior living in Fanshawe Street, Southampton in 1891 and in Brownhill Road, Lewisham in 1901.

When Elinor was three years old, her father abandoned his family, which by then included his second son, Henzell. Eventually, Elinor's father moved in with another woman who had been a servant at his lodgings in 1901, bore him another namesake son, Morris, and in 1911 was living with him as Mrs Dyer.

Elinor was educated in her birthplace town of South Shields. She claimed in later interviews to have attended Dame Allan's School but this can only have been briefly (though she may have taught there for a short time). After finishing her education, she attended Leeds Training College and returned to teach in her hometown. It was around this time that she adopted the name Elinor Mary Brent-Dyer.

In 1922, Elinor published her first book — Gerry Goes to School, which went on to become the first of the La Rochelle titles.

She was received into the Roman Catholic Church in 1930.

In 1933, Elinor and her mother moved to Hereford. For a while, Elinor was a commuting governess, but she eventually opened her own school in Hereford — the Margaret Roper School. This school was closed in 1948. Elinor then devoted all her time to writing.

In 1964, following the death of her mother several years earlier, Elinor moved to Redhill. She died there in 1969, and her final book was published posthumously the same year.