#PAR@ ` ╦TEXT ` ╜Spofford, Harriet Elizabeth Prescott
1835╨1921
writer
Born on April 3, 1835, in Calais, Maine, Harriet Prescott grew up there and from 1849 in Newburyport, Massachusetts. She attended a Newburyport school and in 1853╨1855 the Pinkerton Academy in Derry, New Hampshire. In part to aid the family╒s precarious finances, and with the encouragement of Thomas W. S. Higginson, she turned to writing. Several of her stories were published in Boston newspapers, and in February 1859 James Russell Lowell published her tale ╥In a Cellar╙ in the Atlantic Monthly. Higginson soon introduced her to Boston literary society. In 1860 her first novel appeared anonymously as Sir Rohan╒s Ghost. She published The Amber Gods, a collection of stories, in 1863 and Azarian: An Episode, a novel, in 1864, before her marriage in December 1865 to Richard S. Spofford, a Newburyport lawyer. In Newburyport, for a time in Washington, D.C., where her husband╒s practice took them, and from 1874 in Amesbury, Massachusetts, where they built a large home, she continued to write prolifically.
Spofford╒s stories, essays, travel sketches, and poems appeared in the Atlantic, Scribner╒s, Century, Harper╒s Bazar, and other leading magazines. Her published volumes included New-England Legends, stories, 1871, Art Decoration Applied to Furniture, 1878, The Servant Girl Question, 1881, Poem, 1882, Hester Stanley at Saint Marks, a novel, 1883, Ballads about Authors, 1887, A Scarlet Poppy, and Other Stories, 1894, In Titian╒s Garden, poems, 1897, Old Madame, and Other Tragedies, 1900, The Children of the Valley, 1901, The Great Procession, 1902, Old Washington, 1906, The Fairy Changeling, 1910, The Making of a Fortune, 1911, A Little Book of Friends, essays, 1916, and The Elder╒s People, stories, 1920. Her home was frequented by literary personages, especially the many women writers who were her friends. She died at her home on Deer Island in Amesbury, Massachusetts, on August 14, 1921.
