She was born at Thorp, Norfolk in 1808 to Colonel and Mrs Francis Skelly Tidy, "née" Miss Pinder, daughter of the Chief Justice of Barbados. After school in France and London she married John Ward in 1831. He was a military officer from Waterford, Ireland and his wife accompanied him on various postings. They had one daughter, Isabel. The family lived together on St Helena in the late 1830s. In 1842 they travelled from Cork to the eastern frontier of the Cape and spent five years in the British colony there, at Fort Peddie and Grahamstown, in the so-called "Ceded Territory". Ward returned to Britain in 1848. This is when she started to publish full-length books, building on previous articles and short stories. The Wards may have lived in Dover before moving to Boulogne-sur-Mer in about 1851, but biographical details are scant. She died in 1873.