Frank Wilson Kenyon spent his childhood in Lancashire, England, until his family emigrated to New Zealand when he was twelve years old. There, his father ran a grocery shop and Kenyon started to discover some of the writers who would later influence his own work, including Dickens, Maupassant, Somerset Maugham and H.G. Wells. After leaving school, he worked in a department store before moving to London for two years in his early twenties to develop a writing career. He wrote many historical novels, particularly about famous women in history.