Dorothy Evelyn Smith (née Jones) was born in 1893 in the Peak District of Derbyshire.

Her father was a minister in the United Free Methodist Church, the family eventually moving to London. However, Dorothy set many of her novels in Yorkshire, which she knew well.

By 1911 Dorothy was a part-time student at an art school, and in 1914, she married James Smith, the son of another non-conformist minister.

During World War I, Dorothy began to write poetry and short stories, some of which were published. The Smiths had moved to Essex by 1920 where a daughter and later a son were born. The couple remained in the county, and after James’s death, Dorothy moved to a bungalow at Leigh-on-Sea to be near her son and his family.

In the early years of the Second World War, Dorothy Evelyn Smith began writing her first novel, O, the Brave Music (1943), the first of eleven novels ultimately published, the last in 1966.

Dorothy Evelyn Smith died at the age of 76, in 1969.