Born on July 11, 1871, in Dover, Ohio, Martha Edith Rickert grew up in La Grange, Illinois, and then in Chicago. She attended public schools and in 1891 graduated from Vassar College. While supporting herself by teaching in high schools in and around Chicago she undertook graduate studies in English and philology at the University of Chicago. She studied in Europe for a year and in 1897 returned to Vassar as an instructor of English. She received her Ph.D. from the University of Chicago in 1899. In 1900 she left Vassar and traveled to England, where over the next nine years she did research among medieval texts and produced five novels╤Out of the Cypress Swamp, 1902, The Reaper, 1904, Folly, 1906, The Golden Hawk, 1907, and The Beggar in the Heart, 1909╤and numerous short stories.
After her return to the United States in 1909 she did editorial work for the Ladies╒ Home Journal, wrote or collaborated on several textbooks, and with Jessie Paton edited a volume of American Lyrics, 1912. During 1918╨1919 she worked in the codes and ciphers division of the War Department with John M. Manly, with whom she subsequently collaborated on The Writing of English, 1919, Contemporary British Literature, 1921, Contemporary American Literature, 1922, and other handbooks and textbooks. In 1924 she became associate professor of English at the University of Chicago; she remained on the faculty there for the rest of her life, from 1930 as full professor. Her teaching fields were Chaucer and contemporary literature, the latter of which her earlier work with Manly had been instrumental in bringing into the realm of college studies.
She wrote an influential book on criticism, New Methods for the Study of Literature, 1927, three volumes of children╒s stories, The Bojabi Tree, 1923, The Blacksmith and the Blackbirds, 1928, and The Greedy Goroo, 1929, and a final novel, Severn Woods, 1930. Her last years were devoted to collaborating with Manly (who was also on the Chicago faculty) on the definitive Text of the Canterbury Tales, Studied on the Basis of All Known Manuscripts, which appeared in eight volumes in 1940. Before the completion of that major work she died in Chicago on May 23, 1938.
