Joyce Lankester Brisley was born in 1896 and studied at the Lambeth School of Art. The first Milly-Molly-Mandy stories were published in 1925 in The Christian Science Monitor, and a first collection of these stories was published in book form in 1928.

An accomplished artist as well as a writer, Joyce Lankester Brisley designed posters and book jackets and also illustrated the work of other authors. She died in 1978, but Milly-Molly-Mandy's popularity lives on.