Hilton was born in 1900 in Lancashire, England, and found literary success at an early age, his first novel, Catherine Herself, having been published in 1920. Several of his books found a new audience through film adaptations, notably Lost Horizon (1933), which won a Hawthornden Prize, Goodbye, Mr. Chips (1934), and Random Harvest (1941).
Hilton died in 1954.