Ivy Compton-Burnett was born in Pinner near London. She was the eldest of her father´s second family. She had three half sisters and 2 half brothers but was soon joined by two full brothers and two sisters.

Ivy left home to study at the Royal Holloway College for Women in Surrey and graduated in 1906. But she then returned home to help with the education of the younger children. The family lived in seclusion, almost imprisoned by the widowed Mrs Compton-Burnett who had imposed a rule of withdrawal from social life; her experiences formed the basis for the intense and dramatic scenes of Edwardian family life with their secret, dark and tragic relationships which Ivy later described so intensely in her novels. Not one of the Compton-Burnett children, boys or girls, had their own family. Both her two (full) brothers died young, one of illness and the second in the first world War. The two youngest sisters died together in a joined suicide pact.

Ivy left home forever in 1914, and went to London, and in 1919 met Margaret Jourdain the writer and antiquarian.. Ivy continued to write successfully and they lived together in a wide circle of writers and musicians until Margaret's death in 1951. In 1967 Ivy was awarded the D.B.E. and elected as a Companion of the Royal Society of Literature. She wrote 20 novels in her lifetime and died in 1969 in London.

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