Phyllis Bottome was a British novelist, short story writer, and biographer who worked in English and published under her birth name throughout her career.

Born in Rochester on 31 May 1882, Bottome went on to produce a body of fiction that drew enough attention to bring her work repeatedly to the attention of filmmakers. Four of her works were adapted for the screen: Private Worlds, The Mortal Storm, Danger Signal, and The Heart of a Child. Private Worlds was made into a film in 1935, while The Mortal Storm told a story set in Nazi Germany. Not every adaptation made it to completion on Hollywood's terms — Danger Signal was forbidden from becoming a film by the Hays Office.

Beyond fiction, Bottome worked as a biographer, producing a biography of Alfred Adler. She was also an active anti-fascist, and Germany became her home in the late 1930s, a period that gave particular weight to the concerns running through works like The Mortal Storm. Her full name appears in at least one source as Phyllis Forbes Dennis, though she wrote consistently under the name Phyllis Bottome.

She died in London on 22 August 1963. The thread that runs most visibly through her recorded output is the intersection of fiction with political and psychological subject matter — novels adapted for the screen, a biography of a major figure in psychology, and a personal commitment to opposing fascism that placed her in Germany at a charged moment in European history.