Richard James Elliott was born on March 27, 1907 to Jamie and Kate Elliott. He grew up in Windsor, Broome County, New York, where his parents owned the Windsor Whip Company. Besides acquiring his B.A. in English from Dartmouth College in 1930 and his M.A. from University of Pennsylvania in 1931, Elliott also studied piano at the Curtis Institute of Music in Philadelphia. He taught at St. Andrews School in Tennessee, before switching vocations in 1937 and taking a job at the Brooklyn Public Library; he eventually received a Masters in Library Science from Columbia University. In his time living in Brooklyn, Elliott befriended many artists, writers, and musicians, including Paul Bowles and Oliver Smith.

Elliott returned to live in Windsor in 1947, when he began working in the Harpur College Library and working on his first novel. Elliott also wrote and published under several pseudonyms, such as Richard Hotchkiss, David Martin, and Richard Fields, the last of which he shared with Walter Grutchfield, a librarian at the City College of New York. Elliott also published several works in journals prior to his death in 1974.