Lucy Boston was born in 1892 in Southport, Lancashire, one of six children. She went to a Quaker school in Surrey, and was married in 1917. She later moved to a beautiful manor house near Cambridge which provided the setting for her Green Knowe stories. She started writing at the age of sixty and won the Carnegie Medal for A Stranger of Green Knowe in 1961. Her books are illustrated by her son, Peter. Lucy Boston died in 1990.