Grace Duffie Boylan was born on February 9, 1861, in Kalamazoo, Michigan, to Phelix K. and Juliette Duffie. She was one of eleven children, and her father, who had emigrated from Ireland, owned the Dollar House Hotel in Kalamazoo.
As a child, Boylan attended the "Harvard Annex" and the Northeastern Conservatory of Music in Boston. After graduating, she worked as a journalist in Chicago, writing for the Chicago Daily Inter-Ocean and The Chicago Journal.
Boylan published her "Kids of Many Colors" series of children's books in 1901, featuring stories about children of diverse races and cultures. She also authored several works of juvenile fiction, including "Yama Yama Land" and "Young Folks' Uncle Tom's Cabin".
In addition to her children's literature, Boylan was known for her dialect poetry and patriotic verse. She wrote works such as "If Tam O'Shanter 'd Had a Wheel, and Other Poems and Sketches", "When Mary Looks at Me.", "Who Goes There?", and "The Star of Christmas Morn".
Boylan's adult novels included "The Little White Cross", "Kiss of Glory", "The Supplanter", "The Pipes of Clovis; a Fairy Romance of the Twelfth Century", "The Old House", "Steps to Nowhere", "John of Joy", "Love Finds a Way", "Conquerors", and "When Geronimo Rode" (with Forrestine C. Hooker).
In 1918, Boylan wrote "Thy Son Liveth: Messages from a Soldier to his Mother", a story about an American soldier who sends comforting messages to his grieving mother through Morse code and automatic writing after his death. The book was initially published anonymously, but Boylan later insisted that the story was true and that she was the dead soldier's mother.
Boylan was married several times, to Robert J. Boylan, St. George Kempson, and Louis Napoleon Geldert. She had at least one child with each of her husbands and was a member of several literary organizations, including the Arts Club of Washington, the Authors League of America, and the Poetry Society of America.
Boylan died of heart disease on March 24, 1935, in Memphis, Tennessee, and was survived by her husband, daughter Clover Roscoe, and son Malcolm Stuart Boylan.
