Elaine Dundy (1921–2008) was born and raised in New York. She worked as an actress in Paris and London, where she met her husband, Kenneth Tynan. After the birth of her first child, she turned to writing. Her first novel, The Dud Avocado (1958), based on the year she spent in Paris, was an immediate bestseller on both sides of the Atlantic. Two more novels, including The Old Man and Me, also published by Virago, and two plays followed. In 1964, divorced from Tynan, she returned to America where she wrote extensively for magazines before moving to Massachusetts where she directed and acted. She is the author of several biographies, including Elvis and Gladys (1985), and an autobiography, Life Itself!
