Author. Born Helen Boog Watson in Edinburgh, the daughter of a Free Church minister, Bannerman was brought up in Madeira and privately educated before completing an external degree at the University of St. Andrews, which at that stage did not admit women. She married a doctor in the Indian Medical Service and spent much of her life in India. She became known as the author and illustrator of children's books, including the classic, if politically-incorrect, title The Story of Little Black Sambo (1899).