Born Eileen Mary Challans in London

Eileen Mary Challans, who would become known to the world as Mary Renault, was born on 4 September 1905 in Forest Gate, London, England. She was the daughter of Frank Challans, a physician, and Mary Clementine Baxter.

Her middle-class upbringing afforded her access to education that was still uncommon for many women of her generation, and she went on to study at St Hugh's College, Oxford, where she read English. It was at Oxford that she first encountered classical literature and the Greek historical narratives that would come to define her later literary career.

Her birth in the Edwardian era placed her among a generation of women who would witness enormous social transformation—including women's suffrage, two World Wars, and shifting attitudes toward sexuality and gender roles—all of which would echo throughout her later fiction, particularly her groundbreaking historical novels set in ancient Greece that subtly and then increasingly explicitly explored same-sex love and identity.

This early period, though not itself a public achievement, set the foundation for a life that would eventually make her one of the most significant historical novelists of the twentieth century, especially recognized for her sensitive and historically grounded depictions of homosexuality in the ancient world at a time when such topics were rarely discussed openly in mainstream literature.