Royds attended the Slade School of Art in London in her teens, and at the turn-of-the-century worked with the British artist Walter Sickert in Paris, where she painted her first image of the circus. She spent several years as an art teacher at Havergal College in Toronto before moving to Edinburgh in 1911, where she obtained a position at the College of Art. She married the painter-etcher Ernest Lumsden, who also worked in Canada. Royds made prints throughout her career but was particularly active with woodcuts in the 1920s.
