Educated at Blundell's School in Tiverton and Bedale's School near Petersfield, Wyndham left school at the age of 18. He then embarked on a series of careers, including law, farming, commercial art and advertising. In 1925, he turned to writing. His first novel, The Curse of the Burdens, appeared in 1927. He began contributing short stories to American SF magazines, the first of which appeared as Worlds to Barter in 1931. He published numerous short stories under various pseudonyms during the 1930s. During the Second World War he was a censor in the Ministry of Information, before joining the British Army in the Signal Corps. He took part in the D-Day landings and the heavy fighting in the Falaise Pocket. Following the war, he returned to writing and by 1951, began using the pseudonym of John Wyndham. In 1951, he published his best-known SF novel, The Day of the Triffids, which was immensely successful. He would produce six more novels as Wyndham. He married Grace Isabel Wilson in 1963 and they moved to Petersfield. His other works include The Secret People (1935), Planet Plane (1936), The Kracken Wakes (1953), The Chrysalids (1955), The Sands of Time (1956), The Midwich Cuckoos (1957), The Infinite Moment (1961) and Chocky (1968).