E. M. Delafield (1890-1943) was born in Steyning, Sussex, the elder daughter of Count Henry Philip Ducarel de la Pasture, of Llandogo Priory, Monmouthshire, and Elizabeth Lydia Rosabelle, daughter of Edward William Bonham. Her mother was also a well-known novelist, writing as Mrs Henry de la Pasture.

In 1911, Delafield was accepted as a postulant by a French religious order but left upon learning her sister was planning to join another enclosed order, so as to avoid the separation. Her account of her experience, The Brides of Heaven, was written in 1931 and eventually published in her biography.

Delafield worked as a nurse in a Voluntary Aid Detachment in Exeter at the outbreak of World War I and her first novel, Zella Sees Herself, was published in 1917. She continued to publish one or two novels every year until nearly the end of her life.