[1] In 1861, her parents moved to Hillsdale County, where she grew up, attended school, and began writing at an early age.

[2] She began her literary career while still a school-girl in Litchfield by the publication of the ballad, "Curfew Must Not Ring To night" in the Detroit Commercial Advertiser, which immediately obtained enthusiastic recognition throughout the country.

[2] For a number of years, she contributed regularly to leading magazines and weeklies with popular short stories and poems.

The Year's Best Days, for Boys and Girls was a collection of stories in prose and in verse, for young people.

[2][3] In 1904, Thorpe wrote about the White Lady Cave in San Diego-La Jolla Underwater Park in California.

In The White Lady of La Jolla, Thorpe described: "She is robed in shimmering garments of light, wrapped in a misty veil, and on her head is a wreath like a coronet of orange blossoms".

Durgin wrote; "You have written a poem that will never permit the name of its author to die while the English language is spoken".