Hilda Vaughan was born in 1892 in Builth Wells. She served in a Red Cross hospital during the First World War and was organising secretary of the Women's Land Army in Breconshire and Radnorshire. Vaughan attributed her intellectual awakening to her neighbour, the Squire of Cilmerry Park, S.M.P. Bligh, himself a published author. Her first novel The Battle to the Weak, published in 1925, is set in a rural Radnorshire community. Vaughan went on to write ten novels of varying style, including The Invader (1928) and The Soldier and The Gentlewoman (1932), as well as two plays and short stories, including the novella A Thing of Nought (1934), which reflects the star-crossed lovers theme of her first novel.