Gordon Langley Hall was born in England to an unwed servant. His date of birth is unclear but appears variously as 1922, 1923, 1930, and 1937. He grew up to become a successful writer in London. In the early '50s, he moved to New York's Greenwich Village to start his career as a writer in America. In 1962, Hall moved to Charleston. In 1968, he had a sex-change operation and returned to Charleston as Dawn Langley Hall. She married a black man, John Paul Simmons, apparently became pregnant and bore a daughter, Natasha, in October, 1971. Simmons continued to write under both her new and former names. Simmons died in 2000.
From the guide to the Gordon Langley Hall Papers, 1955-1973, (University of Minnesota Libraries Children's Literature Research Collections [clrc])
