Harriet Elizabeth Prescott Spofford was a prominent American author best known for her short detective stories, novels and poetry. She had a long career and produced a considerable list of publications. In her gothic novels, intertwined with romance and sensuously exquisite descriptions, she unconventionally debunked the prevailing female stereotypes of her day and age. Her manner distinctly diverged from the traditional New England style.
Background
Born in Calais, Maine, in 1849 she moved with her parents to Newburyport, Massachusetts, which was ever after her home, though she spent many of her winters in Boston and Washington, D.C. Spofford embarked on a wrtiting career out of financial need in order to bolster her parents and younger siblings when she was in her twenties. When Higginson asked Emily Dickinson whether she had read Spofford's work “Circumstance,” Dickinson replied, “I read Miss Prescott's ‘Circumstance,’ but it followed me in the dark, so I avoided her.”
Education
At Newburyport her prize essay on Hamlet drew the attention of Thomas Wentworth Higginson, who soon became her friend, and gave her counsel and encouragement.
Career
A contributor to the chief periodicals of the United States, both of prose and poetry. During a writing career that comprised more than sixty years in two centuries, Spofford published repeatedly in periodicals, offering short stories, serialized novels, poetry, and articles for adults and children. She officially adopted a literary career after the publication of the short story "In a Cellar" in the February 1859 issue of the Atlantic Monthly, and continued with it throughout her marriage to Richard S. Spofford Jr. until her last collection, The Elder's People, which appeared in 1920, the year before her death. Spofford's first book was a romance called Sir Rohan's Ghost (1860), but Spofford's short stories outweighed her other writings in lasting importance. Her home was frequented by literary personages, especially the many women writers who were her friends.