Sally Purcell was born in Bromsgrove, Worcestershire in 1944. She studied Mediaeval and Modern French at Lady Margaret Hall, Oxford and continued to live and work in Oxford (as typist, barmaid, researcher and, above all, writer) until her death in 1998. A specialist in mediaeval literature, she edited selections of George Peele and Charles d’Orléans and was the translator of a selection of Provençal Poems. Her main collections of poetry are The Holly Queen (1971), Dark of Day (1977), Fossil Unicorn (1997) and Collected Poems (2002).