Writer, born in Jersey, Channel Is. A writer of romantic novels, she started with The Visits of Elizabeth (1900), and found fame with Three Weeks (1907), a book which gained a reputation for being risqué. She went to Hollywood (19209), where her works were glamorized on the screen. She also wrote an autobiography, Romance Adventure (1936).
She was the celebrated author of such early 20th century bestsellers as It, Three Weeks, Beyond the Rocks, and other novels which were then considered quite racy, as tame as they might seem now.
Glyn was also the younger sister of Lucy, Lady Duff-Gordon, famous as the fashion designer "Lucile".
Career
Although her writing would not be considered scandalous by modern standards, she pioneered mass-market women's erotic fiction.
"Vamp"
On the strength of the popularity and notoriety of her books, Glyn moved to Hollywood where she promoted the concept of the vamp, helping to make a star of actress Clara Bow (the It girl).
A scriptwriter for the silent movie industry, she also had a brief career as one of the earliest female directors.
References in popular culture
A scene in Glyn's most sensational work, Three Weeks, inspired the doggerel:
Glyn also makes an appearance in a 1927 Lorenz Hart song, "My Heart Stood Still" from One dam thing after another:
In Meredith Willson's 1957 musical The Music Man, Marian the Librarian asks the prudish Mrs. Shinn if she would rather have her daughter reading Glyn's work than the classic Persian poetry of Omar Khayyam.
In the 2001 movie The Cat's Meow, Elinor Glyn, played by Joanna Lumley, is one of the guests aboard William Randolph Hearst's yacht on the fateful weekend Thomas Ince died.
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