Her father, Harvey Lord, was managing a mine there, but the family was forced to flee in late 1910 by the Mexican Revolution.

[2] After her father's death in 1920, she went to live with her grandmother in La Jolla, California, where she attended The Bishop's School and became friends with M. F. K. Fisher.

[3] Lord moved to France before World War II and was taken prisoner by the Germans for a short period as a citizen of an enemy country.

[1] Lord, openly lesbian,[4] was the longtime companion of Sybille Bedford, with whom she had a 20 years long relationship.

[6] In her book An Alphabet for Gourmets, Mary Frances Kennedy Fisher admitted to have had an early schoolgirl crush on Eda Lord.