Esther Forbes was born on June 28, 1891, in Westborough, Massachusetts. She attended the University of Wisconsin from 1916 to 1918. Forbes worked as an editor for the Houghton Mifflin publishing company from 1920 until 1926, when she married. The marriage ended in divorce in 1933.

By that time, Forbes had already developed a reputation as a historical novelist. Her first book, O Genteel Lady (1926), was about a Boston editor who sacrificed her passion for writing and for the man she loved to marry a stodgy Harvard professor. Her next book, A Mirror for Witches (1928), was about Doll Bilby, a woman accused of witchcraft in seventeenth-century Salem. These early books dealt with women and their psychological attractions to "demonic" spirits. Forbes's later books, in which she paid meticulous attention to minor details, revealed her skills as a historian.

Influenced by her mother's work as a historian, Esther Forbes wrote Paul Revere...