Elinor Glyn

British writer Elinor Glyn (1864 - 1943) was a novelist and scriptwriter specialising in romantic fiction that at the time was considered scandalous. She influenced early 20th-century popular culture and her work was turned into Hollywood films by notable stars such as Rudolph Valentino, Gloria Swanson and Clara Bow. She was born in the Channel Islands and her father died when she was a child. Her mother returned to her family in Canada and her Anglo-Irish grandmother taught Elinor the ways of upper-class society. The training gave her an entree into aristocratic circles in Europe, and led to her reputation as an authority on style in Hollywood in the 1920s. She married Clayton Louis Glyn, a wealthy barrister. She started writing in 1900 and -Three Weeks-, about an exotic Balkan queen who seduces a young British aristocrat, was allegedly inspired by one of her own affairs.