Michael Harrison was born in Milton, Kent, England, on April 25, 1907. He attended the University of London and served brifly in the British Military Intelligence during World War II.

Harrison published seventeen novels between 1934 and 1954 when he turned to writing detective fiction. He wrote pastiches of Conan Doyle's Sherlock Holmes and Poe's C. Auguste Dupin and was a noted Sherlock Holmes scholar. His most successful work, In the Footsteps of Sherlock Holmes was published in 1958.

Harrison was awarded the Occident Prize for Weep for Lycidas (1934), was named Duke of Sant Estrella by the Kingdom of Redonda (1951), and was named Irregular Shilling by the Baker Street Irregulars of New York (1964). He was a member of the Society of Authors, Crime Writers Association, Baker Street Irregulars of New York, and the Sherlock Holmes Society of London.

Harrison died in September, 1991 at the age of 84.