Sarah Pratt McLean Greene

Born in Simsbury, Connecticut, on July 3, 1856, she grew up on a farm, studied for two years at Mount Holyoke, and later taught on Cape Cod. That time on the Cape gave her material for the writing that would make her name.

Her first book, Cape Cod Folks (1881), brought her early success with its vivid picture of local speech, humor, and everyday life. She followed it with books including Towhead: The Story of a Girl and Some Other Folks, and later published Vesty of the Basins, another well-known Cape Cod novel.

She married Franklin L. Greene in 1887 and spent time in Mexico, Washington Territory, and California before returning to New England after his death in 1890. She died in Lexington, Massachusetts, on December 28, 1935, and is remembered as an American regional writer whose fiction captured the character of coastal New England.