Elinor Bruce Lyon (17 August 1921 - 28 May 2008) was an English children's author.
Lyon was born in Guisborough, Yorkshire and educated at Headington School, Oxford.[1][2] Her father was P. H. B. Lyon. After living for a time in Switzerland, she returned to Oxford to read English at Lady Margaret Hall just as World War II began. She completed four terms, but then joined the WRNS because 'with many...friends being killed, I couldn't stay there reading Milton'.[3] She served two and half years as a radar operator.[3]
Elinor was the inspiration for many of poet John Gillespie Magee, Jr.'s poems. John had met Elinor while attending Rugby School, and remained close friends with Elinor and her family until John's death in December of 1941.[4]
Her father was headmaster at Rugby School; she met her future husband Peter Wright there when he was a temporary Classics and English teacher. They became engaged in 1943. He returned to teaching when he was demobbed in 1946, and though Lyon's father retired in 1948 they remained there until 1975, when they retired to Harlech.[5] They had four children and now have twelve grandchildren.
From 1948 to 1976 Lyon wrote over twenty books for children. She found they 'came much more easily'; than writing for adults and believes her inspiration came from 'ominvorous reading'.[6] She began The House in Hiding, for example, after reading Swallows and Amazons, because she disliked the characters within it (they were too good at everything!).[7] In response, the children in The House in Hiding get things wrong, but still manage to succeed eventually. The main characters in The House in Hiding, Ian and Sovra, reappear in many of her later books.
She died at Harlech, Gwynedd on 28 May 2008.[8]
Elinor Lyon's publisher up until 1962 and for The Day That Got Lost was Hodder & Stoughton; subsequent books were published by the Brockhampton Press. The biography of her father was privately published by Laurence Vinney. Some of her books have been recently republished by Fidra Books.