Eleanor H. Porter was born in Littleton, New Hampshire in 1868. She studied at the New England Conservatory of Music in Boston and married in 1892. She then began writing short stories which were published in newspapers and magazines such as Harper's Weekly. Her first novel, Cross Currents, was published in 1907 but she is best-known for her internationally-acclaimed novel, Pollyanna, which was published in 1913 and went on to be adapted for theatre, television, and screen productions. Eleanor Porter died in 1920 in Massachusetts.