Born in Rockland, Massachusetts, into a well-to-do manufacturing family, Pool's literary talent was recognized and encouraged by her father at an early stage. She taught in the local school for a year before settling down to a life of writing. Her first stories were published by Moses Dow in the Waverly Magazine when she was sixteen years old.

During her twenties, Pool met Caroline M. Branson who, in the tradition of lesbian romantic friendship was to become her life-long companion. The two women lived together for thirty-two years. They moved to Brroklyn in 1870 but in 1877 returned to Massachusetts where they settled in a house that had been a station of the underground railroad in the town of Wrentham, the place where Caroline had grown up.

Pool's and Branson's happy years in Wrentham came to an end in 1894 when Pool felt impelled to move back to Rockland due to her mother's old age and her sister Amelia's ill health. Branson and Pool built a new house near Pool's chidhood home. Pool was at her most productive, writing novels and short stories in quick succession, She was unespectedly struck down with pneumonia and died. Branson survived Pool by many years but was buried, at her request, next to Pool in Mount Pleasant Cemetry in Rockland.

Source: excerpts from: Gabriele Griffin, Who's Who in Lesbian and Gay and Writing, Routledge, London, 2002

Her work include: Tenting At Stony Beach (1888) Dally (1891) Katherine North (1892) Roweny in Boston (1892) Mrs. Keats Bradford (1892) The Two Salomes (1893) Out of Step (1894) Boss and Other Dogs (1896) In a Dike Shanty (1896) In Buncombe County (1896) Mrs. Gerald (1896)

The Red-Bridge Neighborhood (1898) Chums (1899) A Widower and Some Spinsters (1899) Sand 'N' Bushes (1899) The Meloon Farm (1900) Friendship & Folly (undated) Against Human Nature (undated) A Golden Sorrow (undated) A Vacation in a Buggy (undated) In the First Person (undated) Little Bermuda (undated)