Eliza Buckminster Lee

Born into the Buckminster family of New England, she was the daughter of minister Joseph Buckminster and was educated at home by her father and her brother, Joseph Stevens Buckminster, who later became a well-known Unitarian preacher in Boston. After marrying Thomas Lee of Brookline in 1827, she devoted herself more fully to writing and began publishing in the years that followed.

Her books ranged across several forms, including memoir, biography, fiction, and translations from German. She is especially remembered for Memoirs of the Buckminsters, as well as historical novels such as Delusion; or, the Witch of New England and Naomi; or, Boston, Two Hundred Years Ago, which revisit the Puritan past and explore religious feeling, conscience, and everyday life in early New England.

Lee also had personal ties to major figures of her time, including Daniel Webster, and wrote a sketch of his life. Critics and historians have noted the sympathy and care in her portrayals of people and places, qualities that help her work remain a vivid window into 19th-century American literary culture.