Harriet Lummis Smith


Harriet Lummis Smith was an American novelist.

Early life and education

Harriet Lummis was born in Auburndale, Massachusetts, on November 29, 1866. Her father, Henry Lummis, was a clergyman. Her mother was Jennie Brewster. Smith had a half-brother, Charles Fletcher Lummis, by a previous marriage of her father. Her parents moved to Sheboygan, Wisconsin, where her father accepted a teaching post at Lawrence College. She attended the University of Wisconsin and graduated in 1889.

Career

Lummis Smith began her career as a high school teacher. She published her first short story, "Matilda's Good Impression," in Youth's Companion in 1906 and began writing full time after a publisher said she was "wasting her time teaching." Her stories were published in national magazines and widely distributed through newspaper syndicates. Her first novel, Peggy Raymond's Success; or the Girls of Friendly Terrace became a popular series and led to her being tapped to continue the Pollyanna series by Eleanor Porter after Porter's death in 1920.
She was a member of the Woman's Literary Club of Baltimore and was made president in 1915. She married William M. Smith in 1905. She lived in Chicago, Baltimore and eventually Philadelphia, where she died in 1947.

Works