The author of 33 books, as well as numerous short stories and magazine articles, British author Mrs. George de Horne Vaizey was born Jessie Bell in 1856, in Liverpool. She was the daughter of Scots insurance broker David Bell, and his wife, Elizabeth Morris Barton, and had six siblings. She married cotton broker Henry Mansergh in 1883, and a number of her books were originally published under the name "Jessie Mansergh." After the death of Henry Mansergh in 1894, her work began to be published in magazines.

Vaizey was married again in 1898, to George de Horne Vaizey, a man she met while on a cruise won through a story competition. Her son George Vaizey, born in 1900, was also to become a writer. Contracting typhoid in the early years of the twentieth century, she developed rheumatoid arthritis, and was confined to a wheelchair until her death in 1917.