Kate Seredy was born in Budapest, Hungary, on November 10, 1899, to Louis Peter Seredy, a gifted teacher, and Anna Irany Seredy. After high school, Seredy attended the Academy of Arts in Budapest for six years, where she received her art teacher's diploma. She served as a nurse in World War I and subsequently took summer courses in Paris, Rome, and Berlin from 1918 to 1922.

Seredy immigrated to the United States in 1922 and worked as an artist, designing book covers and greeting cards and illustrating textbooks and children's literature. A chance suggestion from editor May Massee of Viking Press that Seredy try to write a story about her childhood in Hungary started her career as a writer in her newly acquired English language. Her first book. The Good Master, was written with great effort in longhand but was promptly accepted for publication. Intensely pictorial, her novels begin...