It wasn’t sex appeal so much as it was pure, simple charisma. She defined “It,” though people get her definition of “It” wrong. She may have been older than the sort of people she mostly wrote about, but it’s impossible to say she wasn’t writing what she knew. She had a long-term relationship with George Curzon, former Viceroy of India. She might have based the affair in Three Weeks after her own relationship with a young British aristocrat. Glyn started writing relatively tame novels, but Three Weeks, a novel about a Balkan queen and her affair with a British aristocrat, sold considerably better. When she married, it seems to have been to another member of the same class he had money, but he burned through it quickly. To be sure, some of her descent is speculative-her father might be descended from a nobleman who died centuries ago-but she’s definitely from one of those families that can tell you where their five-times-great grandparents lived. Glyn was a member of the penniless aristocracy.

While she may be seen as exemplifying the specific attitude and sexuality of the 1920s, she was already in her sixties at the time of It. Elinor Glyn seems to have mostly written her books to pay the bills-her husband burned through the money she earned pretty quickly while he was alive-and the shocking books sold better than the tamer ones.

Further, every generation’s shocking writing will be seen as tame by later ones, whereas things they take for granted are shocking in other ways. Every generation has its share of shocking writers.

The Reason Why by Elinor Glyn