Lilian Lida Bell (1867-1929), who also used the pen name Mrs. Arthur Hoyt Bogue, was an American novelist and travel writer. She was born in Chicago, Illinois, but brought up in Atlanta, Georgia, and began writing from an early age. Her first work of fiction was The Love Affairs of an Old Maid, published in 1893, which was very well-received. The Runaway Equator, a children's book published in 1911 and subtitled The Strange Adventures of a Little Boy in Pursuit of It, tells the stroy of Nimbus the Geography Fairy who takes the little boy, Billy, on a wild ride across heaven and earth in a flying streetcar as they track the Runaway Equator and try to reach him before he melts the North Pole and turns the Evening Star into a comet. With illustrations throughout by American artist and writer Peter Newell (1862-1924).