As a child, he was too ill to regularly attend school, so his education was primarily provided by his father.

In The End of the World, he describes the build-up to the Second Coming of Christ in 1843, as prophesied by William Miller, set in southern Indiana.

The Graysons is a fictionalized account of a famous murder trial that Abraham Lincoln won in 1858 in central Illinois.

Other books were romanticized stories based on his personal experiences, including The Mystery of Metropolisville, about land speculation in southern Minnesota, and The Circuit Rider, about itinerant preachers, set in southwestern Ohio.

[5] From 1869 to 1877 Eggleston edited the eight-page weekly publication Little Folks, advertised as being "an illustrated Paper, for every Sunday, for Infant Scholars."

[7] His boyhood home at Vevay, Indiana, known as the Edward and George Cary Eggleston House, was listed on the National Register of Historic Places in 1973.