Mary E. Wilkins was born on October 31, 1852, in the small town of Randolph, Massachusetts, and moved with her family to Brattleboro, Vermont, when she was fifteen. After the deaths of both her parents, she returned to Randolph and lived the rest of her life there. To help support her family, Free-man taught at a girls' school and published poetry and stories, primarily in children's magazines, in the 1870s. In 1882, she won a cash prize for her first story for adults, and became a full-time writer. She set many of her stories in small New England towns like Randolph and Brattleboro, and wrote knowledgeably about the lives of the people who remained in these Eastern villages while much of the nation's vigorous youth were in the forefront of Western expansion. In 1891, Freeman published her second story collection, A New England Nun and Other Stories. This collection included...