Susan Alice Kerby was born Elizabeth Burton, in Cairo, 4 October 1908.

She lived in Canada from 1912 where she eventually married and divorced John Theodore Aitken. In Canada she worked for the Windsor Star before returning to England in 1935, living in London and working in advertising, public relations and journalism. During the Second World War she worked part-time as a fire watcher, and published three novels, the last of which was Miss Carter and the Ifrit. From 1958 she wrote a number of popular history books under the name Elizabeth Burton.

The author later lived in Witney, Oxfordshire, where she died 30 July 1990.