Usually associated with Sarah Orne Jewett and Mary E. Wilkins Freeman, Alice Brown is known as a regional writer. Although not all of her work employs rural settings and rustic dialect, the early stories that made her reputation are written in that vein. Her first two collections of short stories, Meadow-grass: Tales of New England Life (1895) and Tiverton Tales (1899), were well received by critics and by the public, and they remain her most impressive contributions to American literature.

Alice Brown was born on a farm in Hampton Falls, New Hampshire, the second child and only daughter of Levi and Elizabeth Lucas Robinson Brown. Though the year of her birth is frequently listed as 1857, the Hampton Falls town records list her birth date as 5 December 1856. She attended the district school in Hampton Falls and graduated in 1876 from the Robinson Seminary in Exeter, New Hampshire, four miles from her home...