Harriet Elizabeth Prescott Spofford

Harriet Elizabeth Prescott Spofford (1835–1921) was an American writer of stories, poems and novels. Born in Calais, Maine, she grew up in Newburyport, Massachusetts, and began writing to support her family. Her story "In a Cellar," published in The Atlantic Monthly in 1859, made her name, and her lush, romantic tales such as "Circumstance" and the novel Sir Rohan's Ghost followed. Married to the lawyer Richard Spofford, she lived for many years on Deer Island in the Merrimack River and later wrote domestic and comic stories, verse and essays, including A Scarlet Poppy and Other Stories (1894).