Edith L. M. King was born at Pietermaritzburg, Natal, South Africa, became a student in England, and afterwards taught at Eunice High School, Bloemfontein, where she was headmistress at her retirement in 1922. King spent five years studying art in Paris and exhibited her art with the Everard Group (her older sister was Ruth Everard) and elsewhere. (Thanks to André le Roux, Reference section, National Library of South Africa, Cape Town, for assistance.) Her children's rhymes have a deceptive simplicity. They are all written from a child's perspective, in a child's voice, but any adult reader will soon find that many of these little pieces highlight the child's innocence and unknowing poignantly against the backdrop of a very dark world.

• Adey, David. Companion to South African English literature. Johannesburg, South Africa: Ad. Donker, 1986. PR 9350 .2 C66 1986
• King, Edith L. M. Country Rhymes for Children (Oxford: B. H. Blackwell, 1909). 011650.e.42 British Library
• --. Fifty Country Rhymes for Children (Oxford: Basil Blackwell, 1926). 011645.g.117 British Library
• --. Forms and Fancies. 1926.
• --. Veld Rhymes for Children with Twenty-six Airs (London: Longmans, Green, 1911). 11647.f.46 British Library
• --, and Mary Littlewood. Bloemfontein: An Impression in Verse. 1919.