The Farleys were extremely poor, so at the age of fourteen, Harriet began doing piecework to earn money for her family.

There were high literacy rates among the young female workers of the Lowell mills, and many, like Harriet Farley, had been schoolteachers before entering factory work.

Farley wrote articles and editorials for The Lowell Offering under a myriad of pseudonyms and eventually became editor in 1842; in 1843, Harriot Curtis, a fellow mill worker, became her co-editor.

Farley defended herself in a letter of response to his condemnation, insisting that the Offering was solely a literary magazine and had never been intended to be a political commentary.

[3] The Lowell Offering ceased publication in December, 1845 when protests about working conditions increased, and the magazine began to seem too conservative for its audience.

After moving to New York City, Farley went on to write for the women's magazine Godey's Lady's Book, edited by her friend Sarah J. Hale.

Farley's journalistic work was collected in two volumes in the late 1840s, and she also published a children's novel called Happy Nights at Hazel Nook in 1852.

[6] Through publishing poetry, articles, and personal essays, this magazine provided an opportunity to share the writing of working women in Lowell textile mills.

During the next two decades she stopped publishing and raised four step-children, 3 boys and 1 girl, 1 daughter, Inez DeCourcy Donley.