Marion Cleland Lochhead was born in Wishaw, Lanarkshire, on 19 April 1902 and was educated at Glasgow University. She became a teacher, then turned to journalism and writing. Her early books and poems reflected her religious concerns; she also wrote children's books, a biography of John Gibson Lockhart, and social histories of domestic life in the 18th and 19th centuries. She was a founder member of Scottish PEN in 1927 (along with Helen Cruickshank) and was made a Fellow of the Royal Society of Literature (1955). Her publications include Poems (1928), Painted things (1929), Anne Dalrymple (1934), Cloaked in scarlet (1935), Adrian was a priest (1936), Island destiny (1936), Feast of Candlemas and other devotional poems (1937), The Dancing flower (1938), Fiddler's bidding (1939), Highland scene (1939), On Tintock Tap (1946), St Mungo's bairns (1948), The Scots household in the eighteenth Century (1948), A lamp was lit (1949), John Gibson Lockhart (1954), Their first ten years (1956), Young Victorians (1959), Elizabeth Rigby, Lady Eastlake (1961), St Columba (1963), The Victorian household (1964), Episcopal Scotland in the nineteenth century (1966), Portrait of the Scott country (1968), The renaissance of wonder in children's literature (1977), The other country (1978), Scottish tales of magic and mystery (1978), and Scottish love stories (1979). Marion Cleland Lochhead died in January 1985.