Enid Bagnold was born on October 27, 1889, in Rochester, England.

Her father was a colonel with the Royal Engineers, and the family moved around frequently because of his varied assignments. When Bagnold was nine, her family moved to Jamaica, where as she says in her 1969 autobiography, she began an inner life: "Beauty never hit me until I was nine." At that time, she began to write, and she continued to write for more than seventy years. In the spring of 1902, her father's command expired, and she moved with her family back to England.

In 1903 she was fourteen, the age of her most famous heroine. Velvet Brown of National Velvet. The great success of that work came in part from Bagnold's memories of what adolescence was like.

She attended Priors Field School in Godalming, England, which was run by the mother of the famous author Aldous...