Maria Susanna Cummins, novelist, was born in Salem, Massachusetts, on April 9, 1827. She was the oldest child of David Cummins and his third wife, Maria Franklin Kittredge. Cummins was educated in part by her father and later at "Mrs. Charles Sedgewick's Young Ladies School," which was run by the sister-in-law of the 19th-century novelist Catherine Sedgewick. This association is believed to have been a major literary influence on the young Maria Cummins.

In 1854 Maria Cummins wrote her most famous work, The Lamplighter, a moralistic tale, which met enormous popular success. In 1857 she wrote Mabel Vaughn, in 1860 she wrote El Fureidis, and in 1864 came Haunted Hearts. Many critics believe all of these to be more structurally and technically advanced than The Lamplighter, but none of them matched it in sales.

Little is known of Maria Cummins personally. She lived most of her adult life in Dorchester, Massachusetts, and was very active in the Unitarian Church. She died in Dorchester on October 1, 1866 of "abdominal disease" at the age of 39.

This collection also contains papers of Maria Cummins' father, David, and her brother, Thomas. David Cummins was a native of Topsfield, Massachusetts, born in 1785 and descended from Isaac Cummins, an early settler of Ipswich, Massachusetts. He was a graduate of Dartmouth College and a Judge of the Court of Common Pleas, as well as a lawyer and magistrate. He died in 1855.

Her brother, Thomas Kittredge Cummins, was born in Salem, Massachusetts, on May 12, 1829. He married Meary [Mary] Ann Paschall of St. Louis, Missouri, on June 25, 1863. By the 1880s Thomas was operating as a merchant in Boston. He died in 1903.