Elinor Glyn was born October 17, 1864 in Jersey, Channel Islands, the daughter of Douglas and Elinor Saunders Sutherland. She was raised by her mother after her father died of typhoid fever when Glyn was only a few months old, received only the minimal education available in local schools, and in 1892 married Clayton Glyn, a wealthy entrepreneur. Glyn was a prolific novelist who wrote more than twenty books, several of which were made into silent films starring such performers as Gloria Swanson, Clara Bow, John Gilbert and Rudolph Valentino. Her first book, The Visits of Elizabeth, was published anonymously in 1899 and serialized in The World; it was quite successful. According to her biographer and grandson Anthony Glyn, Glyn derived great pleasure from listening to her friends trying to guess the name of the author. With her earnings, she traveled to Italy, France and Egypt.

Glyn's most popular book nearly ended her writing career. Three Weeks was called too "sensational" and was viciously attacked by nearly every London critic. The love scenes, tame by modern standards, were too explicit for what was still a Victorian press. By 1916 over two million copies of Three Weeks had been sold, and the book had been translated into virtually every European language. The financial success of Three Weeks was fortunate for Glyn because her husband had lost all his money by 1908, making her the sole support of her family. After Glyn's husband died in 1915, she increased the volume of her work and in 1917 signed a lucrative contract with William Randolph Hearst for the American rights to her novels. Her career as a film writer began in 1920, when Glyn was asked to write the screenplay for The Great Moment, starring Gloria Swanson. During the 1930s, Glyn lost most of her money in a failed attempt to start her own film production company. Both of the movies she produced and financed, Knowing Men and The Price of Things, were financial disasters. She returned to writing full-time and continued publishing novels until her death in 1943.