Eleanor H. Porter was born as Eleanor Hodgman in Littleton, New Hampshire on December 19, 1868, the daughter of Francis Fletcher Hodgman and Llewella Woolson. She was trained as a singer, attending New England Conservatory for several years, but later turned to writing. In 1892, she married John Lyman Porter and moved to Massachusetts. That is when she began writing and publishing her short stories and later novels. She died in Cambridge, Massachusetts on May 21, 1920 and was buried at Mount Auburn Cemetery.

Porter mainly wrote children's literature, adventure stories and romance fiction. Her most famous novel is Pollyanna (1913), later followed by a sequel, Pollyanna Grows Up (1915). Her adult novels include The Turn of the Tide (1908), The Road to Understanding (1917), Oh Money! Money! (1918), Dawn (1919), Keith's Dark Tower (1919), Mary Marie (1920), and Sister Sue (1921); her short story collections include Across the Years (c. 1923), Money, Love and Kate (1923), Little Pardner (1926).

Porter achieved considerable commercial success: in 1913, Pollyanna ranked eighth among bestselling novels in the United States, second in 1914, and fourth in 1915 (it went through forty-seven printings between 1915 and 1920); in 1916, Just David ranked third; in 1917, The Road to Understanding ranked fourth; in 1918, Oh Money! Money! ranked fifth.