Lyle Gifford Boyd

Lyle Gifford Boyd was an American writer and editor who grew up in St. Joseph, Missouri, and graduated with honors in English from the University of Kansas in 1931. Archival records describe a life that mixed literary work with research and travel, including years spent abroad in the 1930s and later editorial work for the Harvard College Observatory and the Smithsonian Astrophysical Observatory.

She also wrote science fiction with her husband William Clouser Boyd under the joint pen name Boyd Ellanby. Together they published stories in major genre magazines during the 1950s, including work such as Category Phoenix and The Star Lord, giving her a small but distinctive place in mid-century magazine science fiction.

Beyond fiction, Boyd worked on nonfiction and reference projects, including Writing a Technical Paper, The Harvard College Observatory: The First Four Directorships, 1839–1919 with Bessie Zaban Jones, and The World of Flying Saucers with astronomer Donald H. Menzel. She died in Watertown, Massachusetts, on January 1, 1982.