Harriet Elizabeth Prescott was born in Calais, Maine, on April 3, 1835. She moved with her parents to Newburyport, Massachusetts, in 1849 where she attended the Putnam Free School. She also attended the Pinkerton Academy in Derry, New Hampshire (1853-1855). When her parents became infirm and the family's finances problematic, Prescott started to write. With encouragement from Thomas W. S. Higginson, her stories appeared in the Boston newspapers and later in the A tlantic Monthly . Her first novel, Sir Rohan's Ghost, appeared anonymously in 1860. Other novels followed and her work (poems, essays, stories and travel writings) appeared in the Atlantic, Scribner's, Century and other leading magazines of the day.
In 1865 she married Richard Smith Spofford, Jr. (1833-1888), a Boston lawyer and sometime author. They resided on Deer Island, Amesbury, Massachusetts. Harriet Spofford continued to write and travel. It is at the Deer Island home that she died on August 14, 1921.
From the guide to the Harriet Elizabeth Prescott Spofford Collection MS 252., 1862-1920, (Mortimer Rare Book Room)
