Raised in Waiuku, Elsie Locke graduated from Auckland University in 1933, in the depths of the Great Depression. She worked intermittently as a freelance journalist, and in 1934 established a newspaper called The Working Woman, for which she solicited articles on topics such as the women who sought the franchise, peace, childcare, adequate free medical services, and equal pay. This paper developed into a co-operative feminist journal called Women Today, which worked under the slogan of “Peace, Freedom, and Progress” - a slogan which sums up the focus of Elsie Locke’s life. She married in 1941, and while raising four children continued to take leading roles in the Campaign for Nuclear Disarmament and the peace movement.

Elsie Locke is especially respected for her success in combining sound historical research with writing for children. Her work is rich in the quality of knowledge, careful eliciting of the implications of events, and imaginative imbuing of the factual with vitality and life. She made history accessible and attractive to a wide readership, drawing on those aspects of New Zealand’s story about which she felt passionately yet wrote objectively: issues such as Màori-Pàkehà relationships and the impact of Christianity. She offered perspectives on their country’s past and present which helped readers, young and old, look to the future and seek the peace she so cherished.