Joan Coggin was born in 1898 in Lemsford, Hertfordshire, the daughter of the Rev. Frederick Ernest Coggin. Her mother, who was the daughter of Edward Lloyd, founder of Lloyd’s Weekly London Newspaper, died when she was eight. She was educated, together with her sister Enid, at Wycombe Abbey, a setting she would later use for her girls’ school stories, written under the pseudonym Joanna Lloyd.
Leaving Wycombe in 1916, Coggin became involved in the war effort, working as a nurse at Eastbourne. Her first novel, And Why Not Knowing, was published in 1929, and was followed by a series of mysteries featuring the amusingly inadvertent detective, Lady Lupin Lorrimer. Galileo is republishing all her Lady Lupin books.