The simple stories and poems, written in her childhood, were the
beginning of the career of the authoress, Anna Katherine Greene, who
was born in Brooklyn, New York, November 11, 1846, daughter of James
Wilson and Anna Katherine Greene. Her early education was obtained in
the public schools of New York city and Buffalo, and she completed her
course of study in Ripley Female College, Poultney, Vermont, graduating
in 1867. Returning to her native city, she engaged in literary work,
and, in 1878, produced her first important novel, “The Leavenworth
Case.” She attracted immediate attention in literary circles. It had
been carefully prepared and was given to the public only after repeated
revisions. It had a phenomenal sale—already, in 1894, exceeding seven
hundred and fifty thousand copies. From that time on there was a great
demand from the publishers for books from her pen, and during the next
seventeen years she wrote and published fifteen novels. The story of
“The Leavenworth Case” was dramatized and produced during the season
of 1891 and 1892, her husband, Charles Rohlfs, to whom she had been
married in 1884, sustaining the leading part, Harwell. The book is also
used as a text-book in Yale university to demonstrate the fallacy of
circumstantial evidence.