A native New Englander, Elizabeth George Speare was born on November 21, 1908, in Melrose, Massachusetts. She now lives in Easton, Connecticut. For more than twenty years, she lived in Wethersfield, Connecticut, where the events of The Witch of Blackbird Pond take place.

After earning her bachelor's and master's degrees from Boston College, Speare spent some years as a teacher and mother before turning to research and writing full time. She was almost fifty years old before she published her first young adult novel, Calico Captive.

Speare is one of the few authors whose books have been awarded the Newbery Medal twice: The Witch of Blackbird Pond and The Bronze Bow were so honored in 1959 and 1962 respectively. Her latest novel. The Sign of the Beaver, was named a Newbery Honor Book and won the first Scott O'Dell Award for historical fiction.