Rosalind Murray

Born in 1890, she was the daughter of the classical scholar Gilbert Murray and Lady Mary Howard, and grew up in Glasgow and Oxford. She was educated by governesses and at Priors Field School, and published her first novel, The Leading Note, in 1910 when she was still very young.

She went on to write several novels, including Moonseed, Unstable Ways, and The Happy Tree, the book for which she is now especially remembered. She married the historian Arnold J. Toynbee in 1913, and her life moved in literary and intellectual circles, but her fiction is often admired for feeling warm, observant, and deeply human rather than grand.

Later in life she also wrote religious and reflective works. Although much of her writing fell from view for a time, modern reprints have helped bring her back to new readers, especially those interested in overlooked twentieth-century women writers.