author
Harriet Elizabeth Prescott Spofford
1835–1921
A pioneering American writer of Gothic romance, poetry, and short fiction, she built a literary career that lasted more than sixty years. Her work helped stretch the possibilities of nineteenth-century women's writing, blending suspense, vivid description, and psychological intensity.
4 Audiobooks
Stories of Intellect
by Rebecca Harding Davis, Thomas De Quincey, Charles Dickens, Nathaniel Hawthorne, Baron Edward Bulwer Lytton Lytton, Edgar Allan Poe, Harriet Elizabeth Prescott Spofford
Three Heroines of New England Romance Their true stories herein set forth by Mrs Harriet Spoffard, Miss Louise Imogen Guiney, and Miss Alice Brown
by Harriet Elizabeth Prescott Spofford, Alice Brown, Louise Imogen Guiney
Stories of Romance
by Dinah Maria Mulock Craik, Allan Cunningham, Oliver Wendell Holmes, Harriet Elizabeth Prescott Spofford, John Wilson
A scarlet poppy, and other stories
by Harriet Elizabeth Prescott Spofford
About the author
Born in Calais, Maine, on April 3, 1835, and raised largely in Newburyport, Massachusetts, she became one of the most widely published American writers of her era. Early recognition came when her story In a Cellar appeared in The Atlantic Monthly in 1859, helping establish her reputation for lush, dramatic prose and unusual imaginative power.
Over the course of a long career, she wrote novels, short stories, poems, essays, criticism, and memoirs. She is especially remembered for Gothic and sensation fiction that often gave women characters more complexity and force than readers of the time were used to seeing.
She married Richard Spofford in 1865 and continued writing for decades afterward, remaining an important presence in American literary culture. Harriet Prescott Spofford died on August 14, 1921, leaving behind a body of work that now interests readers for its atmosphere, invention, and early contribution to American mystery and Gothic writing.