E. Lionel Harvie was born in England and in his younger days was a journalist and teacher. Teaching at the English school at Wei-Hai-Wei, in China, in 1911, he met the woman who was later to be his wife, Charlotte Roberta Mallyon.
He returned to England, and she to South Australia, but he later travelled to New Zealand and undertook theological studies at St John's College, Auckland, and in 1915 he and Roberta Mallyon were married. He served as Vicar of the parishes of Frankton Junction, Inglewood, Epsom and Cambridge in New Zealand before being called to a parish in South Australia. He and his family arrived in SA on 5 December 1929. He was the Rector of St Bartholemew's Church of England, Norwood, from 1930 to his death in 1936, and it was during this time that his books of religious verse were published.
