Eileen Hall was an American

United States

The United States of America is a federal constitutional republic comprising fifty states and a federal district...

 poet. She was a friend of Ford Madox Ford

Ford Madox Ford

Ford Madox Ford was an English novelist, poet, critic and editor whose journals, The English Review and The Transatlantic Review, were instrumental in the development of early 20th-century English literature...

's. She married Dr Michael Lake and her first collection - The Fountain and the Bough (1938) - is dedicated to him. After the marriage she was also known as Eileen Lake and Eileen Hall Lake.

Hall was born in Antigua

Antigua

Antigua , also known as Waladli, is an island in the West Indies, in the Leeward Islands in the Caribbean region, the main island of the country of Antigua and Barbuda. Antigua means "ancient" in Spanish and was named by Christopher Columbus after an icon in Seville Cathedral, Santa Maria de la...

; her father's family was from Oxford

Oxford

The city of Oxford is the county town of Oxfordshire, England. The city, made prominent by its medieval university, has a population of just under 165,000, with 153,900 living within the district boundary. It lies about 50 miles north-west of London. The rivers Cherwell and Thames run through...

 and her mother's family was part French and part Irish, the French side having been in the West Indies since the mid seventeenth century.

Hall travelled to Paris with her friend the painter Janice Biala

Janice Biala

Janice Biala was a Polish-born American painter well regarded both in France and the United States for her paintings of intimate interiors, portraits of her famous friends, and the places she traveled. In 1930, on a trip to Paris, she met and fell in love with the English Novelist, Ford Madox Ford...

. Hall's friend Willard Trask invited both women to one of Ford Madox Ford's regular Thursday afternoon salons. Ford and Biala fell in love, and stayed together until Ford's death in 1939.