Eleanor Stackhouse Atkinson was born in Indiana in 1863. She began her working life as a schoolteacher. When she moved to Chicago, she worked for the Chicago Tribune under the pseudonym Nora Marks. In 1891 she married Francis Blake Atkinson, the news editor of the Chicago Evening Post. They set up a children’s publishing company together called The Little Chronicle. Her best-known book is Greyfriars Bobby, which was published in 1912 and has been adapted numerous times for the screen. She died in 1942.