Katharine Lee Bates (August 12, 1859 – March 28, 1929) was an American author and poet, chiefly remembered for her anthem "America the Beautiful", but also for her many books and articles on social reform, on which she was a noted speaker.

Her father died a few weeks after she was born, and she was primarily raised by her mother and a literary aunt, both of whom had graduated from the all-women's Mount Holyoke Seminary.

In 1889, Bates's young adult novel Rose and Thorn won a prize awarded by the Congregational Sunday School and Publishing Society.

[1] Taking advantage of new educational opportunities available to women after the Civil War,[1] Bates used prize money from Rose and Thorn[2] to travel to England and study at Oxford University in 1890–91.

[2] She contributed regularly to periodicals (sometimes under the pseudonym James Lincoln), including The Atlantic Monthly, Boston Evening Transcript, Christian Century, Lippincott's, and The Delineator.

[6] In 1900, she wrote Spanish Highways and Byways for The New York Times, a travelogue that not only described with beauty and precision the landscapes of a post-war Spain, but also made a commentary on the political and social panorama that she found once the war was over.

[1] While the house was being built, Bates traveled to Egypt and the Holy Land with Wellesley College president Caroline Hazard.

"[citation needed] While working at Wellesley, Bates was elected a member of the newly-formed Pi Gamma Mu honor society for the social sciences because of her interest in history and politics.

[1]: 110  She wrote and spoke extensively about the need for social reform[2] and was an avid advocate for the global peace movement that emerged after World War I.

She said: "Though born and bred in the Republican camp, I cannot bear their betrayal of Mr. Wilson and their rejection of the League of Nations, our one hope of peace on earth.

When a version appeared in her collection America the Beautiful, and Other Poems (1912), a reviewer in the New York Times wrote: "we intend no derogation to Miss Katharine Lee Bates when we say that she is a good minor poet.

[13] The nature of Bates's relationship with her Wellesley College faculty colleague, friend, occasional traveling companion, and "Scarab House" tenant Katharine Coman has been the subject of scholarly discussion for four decades.

"[1]: 104  Ponder stresses Coman's importance to Bates in showing her how college professors like themselves could "challenge accepted attitudes towards women's social, economic, cultural, and gender roles".

[1]: 263  In her virtuosic corona of sonnets "In Bohemia," Bates celebrates the "vitality, adventurous spirit, and abiding spiritual presence of their love".

"[15] And in 1999, historian Lillian Faderman also concluded that the relationship between Bates and Coman was a "lesbian arrangement," including them among the other women faculty at Wellesley who paired off with each other.

"[17] Certainly, Bates long shared rental housing with various Wellesley faculty members, all of whom thereby economized while earning small salaries.

[18]: 61  Both colleagues became influential independent women within their fields during their lifetimes; and Bates's work has continued to influence American life and literature to this day.

"[18]: 63  In 1922, Bates published Yellow Clover: A Book of Remembrance, a collection of poems she had addressed to Coman while alive or since her death.

She dedicated the volume to Coman, referred to her as "my Friend [sic]", and included as a "Prefatory Note" a three-page biography of Coman largely focused on her career as an economist and historian, but written in a tone personal enough to allow a reference to her "vigorous and adventurous personality" and her "undaunted courage" in continuing to work during her final illness.