Marion Lansing was an American author and editor whose books introduced children to history, folklore, and literature. Publishing as Marion Florence Lansing, she wrote Barbarian and Noble and Patriots and Tyrants, using narrative to make the medieval world accessible. Her work connects rulers and conflicts with the customs and social relationships that shaped everyday life.

Lansing earned a master's degree at Radcliffe College and brought a broad literary interest to educational publishing. Her books include Page, Esquire, and Knight, while her edited collections present fairy tales and traditional stories for young readers. This range allowed her to move between accounts of historical societies and the imaginative literature passed down within them.

Her storytelling relies on recognizable people, vivid incidents, and carefully selected details rather than a bare sequence of dates. Chivalry, leadership, loyalty, and the changing organization of society recur across her historical writing. Like other educational books of their era, these works reflect contemporary assumptions and should be read with that context in mind. Lansing's lasting attraction is her ability to make a distant subject inviting enough to encourage further exploration.