The daughter of John Gordon Gray and Anne Iszard Gray, Elizabeth Janet Gray was bom on October 6, 1902, in the old Germantown section of Philadelphia. She demonstrated an aptitude for literature early in life and began writing for school publications while in grade school in Germantown.

She later attended Germantown Friends School and Bryn Mawr College; both institutions were associated with the Society of Friends religion, more commonly called Quakerism.

After receiving her bachelor of arts degree from Bryn Mawr in 1923, Gray started writing full-time but could not get her stories published. After a year of teaching, she enrolled in the library science program at Drexel Institute, now Drexel University. She earned her bachelor of science degree in 1926 and accepted a position at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, where she published her first books and met Morgan Fisher Vining, a university administrator...