Helen Douglas Adam was a Scottish journalist and author. After moving to London, she worked as a journalist for the Weekly Scotsman. At the outbreak of the Second World War she was stranded in Connecticut, where she had been attending a wedding. She later moved to San Francisco, where she became a muse to the beat generation of the 1950s and 60s.
Her dark, timeless tales of doomed love and emotional revenge are hauntingly crafted into traditional ballad forms. Thanks to publication in magazines and anthologies and personal readings at universities, theatres and poetry centres, she had an enthusiastic following in the USA. Her Selected Poems and Ballads were published in 1974.