Rosemary Wells was born in New York City in 1943, but spent most of her childhood years in her parents' home near Red Bank, New Jersey or at her grandmother's home on the Jersey Shore. Her father was English/Australian and their home was filled with books and nineteenth-century music.

Wells says she was a poor student at Red Bank High School; however, her artistic ability gained her entrance into the prestigious Museum School in Boston where she studied art. She left the Museum School at age nineteen to marry and worked as a textbook designer in Boston for two years. When her husband entered the Columbia University School of Architecture they moved to New York and she worked as a designer for another publisher. She and her husband currently live in Briarcliff Manor, New York with their two daughters. They like to end each...