Katharine Lee Bates, born August 12, 1859, graduated from Wellesley College in 1880, joined its English Department five years later, and earned a Masters degree there in 1891 following study at Oxford in 1888-89. She published the scholarly work for which she is best known critically, The English Religious Drama, in 1893, and edited many classics of English literature. One of her anthems, America the Beautiful, gave her a greater standing with the public. She published seven volumes of poetry, much of which was unabashedly patriotic: The College Beautiful (1887), Sunshine and Other Verses for Children (1890), America the Beautiful, The Retinue (1918), Yellow Clover (1922), The Pilgrim Ship, and America the Dream (1930). She died March 28, 1929, in Wellesley, Massachusetts.

• The National Cyclopaedia of American Biography. Vol. XLII. New York: James T. White, 1958. 204-05.