Wylie was born in Somerville, New Jersey. Her grandfather, Henry M. Hoyt, was a governor of Pennsylvania. She was raised in this socially prominent family in Washington, D.C. Her aunt was Helen Hoyt, a minor poet. She graduated in 1912 from the Holton-Arms School in Bethesda, Maryland. She eloped with Harvard graduate Philip Simmons Hichborn (September 30, 1882 in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania - committed suicide 1912) son of a rear-admiral Philip Hichborn (March 4, 1839 in Charlestown, Massachusetts - 1910), they were married on December 13, 1906. She later eloped with Horace Wylie while still married to Hichborn. She married three times and had a son Philip Simmons Hichborn, Jr. (September 22, 1907 in Washington, D.C. - ?) by her first husband. Her last marriage (in 1923) was to William Rose Benét (February 2, 1886 in Brooklyn, New York - May 4, 1950) who was part of her literary circle and brother of Stephen Vincent Benet.

Her parents were Henry Martyn Hoyt (December 1856 in Wilkes-Barre, Pennsylvania - ?) and Anne Morton McMichael (July 31, 1861 in Pa. -?). Their other children were:

Talented in several arts, she was torn between painting and writing, but her position inside Washington, D.C. literary circles, particularly with John Dos Passos and Edmund Wilson, encouraged her writing efforts. She wrote eight novels and several books of poetry. Her first book, Incidental Numbers (1912), was published privately in England. The first of her books to bring her recognition was her first official collection of poetry, Nets to Catch the Wind (1921). She was named literary editor of Vanity Fair magazine in 1922.

Her other volumes of poetry include: Black Armour (1923), Trivial Breath (1928), Angels and Earthly Creatures (1929), and Collected Poems of Elinor Wylie (1932). Wylie's literary interests are largely conservative and formal, as demonstrated by her preoccupation with the sonnet. Heavily influenced by 16th and 17th century English poetics, Wylie also shares the Romantics' infatuation with nature and fantasy.

Her last novel, Orphan Angel (1926) explores what Percy Bysshe Shelley's life would have been like if he had escaped his early death and moved to America.