Activist, essayist, poet, and biographer, Lillie Buffum Chace Wyman was a late-nineteenth-century writer who was virtually unknown outside New England reformist circles. Shaped and nurtured by the antislavery and women's rights movements, she wrote stories and essays, appearing in popular periodicals between 1877 and 1925, that advocated prohibition, equal rights for women, and equality for all races and classes. Wyman's most significant contributions to American letters are her depictions of conditions in New England factory villages and her advocacy of social reform and personal growth, all of which link her to nineteenth-century Realist writers such as Rebecca Harding Davis, Elizabeth Stuart Phelps, and Sarah Orne Jewett.

Elizabeth (Lillie) Buffum Chace was born on 10 December 1847 in Valley Falls, Rhode Island, to Samuel Buffington Chace and Elizabeth Buffum Chace. The eighth child and oldest living daughter of ten children, Lillie was raised in an antislavery household by parents who were followers of...