M. M. Kaye

M. M. Kaye (1908-2004), born Mary Margaret "Mollie" Kaye in Simla, British India, was a British novelist and illustrator. Sent to England for boarding school at ten, she trained in book illustration before publishing children's stories as Mollie Kaye from 1937 and her first adult thriller, Six Bars at Seven, in 1940. After marrying army officer Godfrey Hamilton in 1945 she wrote as M. M. Kaye, encouraged toward historical fiction by her literary agent, Paul Scott. Her sweeping 1978 novel The Far Pavilions became a worldwide bestseller and revived interest in her earlier Shadow of the Moon and Trade Wind; she also wrote the children's book The Ordinary Princess and a three-volume autobiography. In 2003 she received the Colonel James Tod International Award from the Maharana Mewar Foundation.