M. M. Kaye

Mary Margaret Kaye was born in Simla in 1908 into a family with long connections to British administration and the Indian Army. She spent her early childhood in India, was educated in England and returned to the subcontinent as a young woman. She worked as an illustrator and published early children's books and mysteries under forms of the name Mollie Kaye before establishing her mature literary career.

Her novels include Shadow of the Moon, Trade Wind and The Far Pavilions, and her three-volume autobiography Share of Summer records her childhood, return to India, early writing and the approach of the Second World War. Her recollections preserve a vivid personal view of the Raj, but historical use should distinguish that privileged British perspective from the wider political and social experience of colonial India.

In non-fiction, M. M. Kaye is discussed in M. M. Kaye’s The Sun in the Morning, M. M. Kaye’s Golden Afternoon, and M. M. Kaye’s Enchanted Evening. In M. M. Kaye’s The Sun in the Morning, M. M. Kaye begins her autobiography with her 1908 birth in Simla and a childhood divided between the hill station, Delhi and journeys connected with her father's work.