She was born as Eleanor Hodgman in Littleton, New Hampshire

Littleton, New Hampshire

Littleton is a town in Grafton County, New Hampshire, United States. The population was 5,928 at the 2010 census. Situated at the edge of the White Mountains, Littleton is bounded on the northwest by the Connecticut River....

 on December 19, 1868, the daughter of Francis Fletcher Hodgman and Llewella Woolson. She was trained as a singer

Singing

Singing is the act of producing musical sounds with the voice, and augments regular speech by the use of both tonality and rhythm. One who sings is called a singer or vocalist. Singers perform music known as songs that can be sung either with or without accompaniment by musical instruments...

, attending New England Conservatory for several years, but later turned to writing. In 1892, she married John Lyman Porter and moved to Massachusetts

Massachusetts

The Commonwealth of Massachusetts is a state in the New England region of the northeastern United States of America. It is bordered by Rhode Island and Connecticut to the south, New York to the west, and Vermont and New Hampshire to the north; at its east lies the Atlantic Ocean. As of the 2010...

. That is when she began writing and publishing her short stories and later novels. She died in Cambridge, Massachusetts

Cambridge, Massachusetts

Cambridge is a city in Middlesex County, Massachusetts, United States, in the Greater Boston area. It was named in honor of the University of Cambridge in England, an important center of the Puritan theology embraced by the town's founders. Cambridge is home to two of the world's most prominent...

 on May 21, 1920 and was buried at Mount Auburn Cemetery

Mount Auburn Cemetery

Mount Auburn Cemetery was founded in 1831 as "America's first garden cemetery", or the first "rural cemetery", with classical monuments set in a rolling landscaped terrain...

.
Porter mainly wrote children's literature

Children's literature

Children's literature is for readers and listeners up to about age twelve; it is often defined in four different ways: books written by children, books written for children, books chosen by children, or books chosen for children. It is often illustrated. The term is used in senses which sometimes...

, adventure stories

Adventure novel

The adventure novel is a genre of novels that has adventure, an exciting undertaking involving risk and physical danger, as its main theme.-History:...

 and romance fiction.