[3][4] After studying subjects including Greek on her own, she took the entrance exam to enter Smith College in 1882 and graduated in 1886.

[5] Lee's first published work was a short story called "Bufiddle", which appeared in The Independent on August 4, 1887.

[9] Another contemporary review regarded Kate as an example of "the New England type of woman" who was "becoming conspicuously prominent in the fiction of the day".

[17] The novel, in which Achilles rescues a kidnapped daughter of an industrialist, attempts to tackle prejudice against immigrants and nouveaux riches.

[19][20] Unfinished Portraits (1916) is a set of fictionalized biographical sketches of historical artists and musicians, including Franz Schubert, Frédéric Chopin, Giorgione, and Albrecht Dürer.

[21] Her short story "The Cat and the King", published in the Ladies' Home Journal in 1919, describes love between two women college students.

Lillian Faderman argues that "[t]he probable lack of sophistication of most Journal readers explains perhaps why love between women could be treated in such positive terms at so late a date".