L. Adams Beck (1862–1931)

Elizabeth Louisa "Lily" Moresby was born on 1862 in Queenstown, Cork, Ireland, UK, the second child of Irish Jane Willis (Scott) and English John Moresby, a Royal Navy Captain who explored the coast of New Guinea and was the first European to discover the site of Port Moresby. She had a eldest brother Walter Halliday, and four youngest sisters Ethel Fortescue, Georgina, Hilda Fairfax and Gladys Moresby. Due to he father's work and her marriage to a Royal Navy commander Edward Western Hodgkinson, she lived and traveled widely in the East, in Egypt, India, China, Tibet, and Japan. Asian culture would greatly influence her and became a staunch Buddhist. She collabored in the writing of her father's book. Two Admirals: Sir John Moresby and John Moresby (1909).

After widowing arund 1910, she remarried in 1912 to retired solicitor Ralph Coker Adams Beck. In 1919, the marriage visit Victoria, British Columbia, Canada, where she settled alone eventually. Surrounded by her Oriental art and Oriental servants, she entertained fortnightly at her home on Mountjoy Avenue in Oak Bay as a strict vegetarian with ascetic inclinations.

She was 60 years old by the time she started to publishing her novels, which commonly had an oriental setting. She used various pen names such as L. Adams Beck for her stories set in exotic locales, E. Barrington for popular historical romances and Louis Moresby for non-fiction.

She returned to Asia, and continued to write until her death on 3 January 1931 in Miyako Hotel, Kyoto, Japan.