Margery Williams Bianco (July 22, 1881 – September 4, 1944) was a British-American author of children’s books best known for The Velveteen Rabbit. Born the second daughter in London of an accomplished family, she was encouraged to read widely and to create. The sudden death of her father at age seven was a profound event that left her with an awareness of sadness and loss that became themes in her books. Not long after, in 1890, her family moved to rural Pennsylvania, where she studied in a convent school in Sharon Hill. She returned to England in 1901 to pursue her writing ambitions and soon began to publish. In 1904 she met and married Francesco Bianco, a bookseller, with whom she had a son and daughter. In 1907 the family moved to Paris and later to Turin, Italy, where they weathered the World War I. In 1921 the family moved to the United States and settled in Greenwich Village, where they lived for the rest of their lives. The 1922 publication of The Velveteen Rabbit, her first children’s book, set her on the path of a prolific and successful career as an author of children’s books noted for the humanization of animals and inanimate objects and a sense of melancholy followed by a spiritually uplifting finale.