Macmillan Collector’s Library: Pollyanna

Eleanor Hodgman Porter was born in Littleton, New Hampshire, in 1868. She was musically talented from early childhood and trained at the New England Conservatory before embarking on a career as a singer.

She married John Lyman Porter in 1892 and turned her hand to writing, publishing her first children’s book, Cross Currents, in 1907.

A prolific writer, Porter followed this with fourteen more books and innumerable short stories. She is best remembered for Pollyanna, the eponymous story of an irrepressibly optimistic young orphan, which brought her huge international success. She died in Cambridge, Massachusetts in 1920.