Porter, Eleanor

Porter, Eleanor (b. Hodgman) (Eleanor Stuart, pen name)

(1868–1920) writer; born in Littleton, N.H. She studied at the New England Conservatory of Music, Boston, married (1892), and was a concert singer, teacher, and writer beginning in 1901. She is remembered for her series of books for young readers, beginning with Pollyanna (1913), so excessive in their cheerfulness that the name has become a synonym for an irrepressible or even irritatingly optimistic individual.