- After getting married she wrote sentimental romance novels to help make ends meet. These were only moderately successful. Then she decided to go all out and write a selacious novel about a three-week love affair between an exotic woman and an upper-class man. "Three Weeks" was an instant scandal in 1907. Like "Lady Chatterly's Lover" and "Peyton Place", it was vilified from the world's pulpits while becoming a worldwide smash (although not as well written as either of those books). Initially banned for a time in the United States and Great Britain, "Three Weeks" provided Madame Glyn, as she was sometimes called, with lifetime financial security.
- Coined the term "it" (eg. "an 'it' girl") and defined it as "a strange magnetism that attracts both sexes." She claimed only four people in Hollywood had "it": Antonio Moreno, Rex the Wild Stallion, the Ambassador Hotel doorman, and Clara Bow.
- Sister of couturière and Titanic survivor Lady Duff Gordon.
- Two daughters: Margot (June 1893) and Juliet (15 December 1898).
- Joanna Lumley portrays her in the film The Cat's Meow (2001)
- "Three Weeks" took six weeks to write.
- Father-in-law, Clayton Glyn Sr. Esquire was a justice of the peace in Essex, England. He died in 1888.
- Father Douglas Sutherland caught typhoid fever while working as an engineer on the Turin tunnel in Italy. His death left his wife Elinor Saunders a widow after four years of marriage with two young children, Elinor was four months old, sister Lucy was not yet two. Her stepfather, who she detested, was David Kennedy.
- Had one brother-in-law and three sisters-in-law.
- Her father Douglas Sutherland was the last descendant of a Scottish lord who lost his lands for supporting the Stuart line of Charles II.
- Life-long favorite author was the courtier Philip Stanhope, the 4th Earl of Chesterfield. His "Letters to His Son on the Art of Becoming a Man of the World and a Gentleman" sat next to her bed all her life.
- Grandson (of daughter Margot) is the writer Anthony Glyn.
- After her father's death, her mother left Elinor and her older sister Lucy in the care of their grandmother Lucy Anne Saunders in Guelph in Southwestern Ontario, Canada. her grandmother was the daughter of Sir Richard Wilcocks of Dublin, Ireland. Her maternal grandfather's mother was a French aristocrat who survived the Revolutionary Terror by hiding in the countryside. After their marriage they moved to Pondicherry, India before emigrating to Canada in 1833. They had eight daughters and one son.
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