Miriam
Coles was born into a Long Island family going back to the 17th century. She
was descended from Robert Coles who immigrated to
America with John Winthrop in 1630. She
was educated at St. Mary's Hall-Doane Academy (now
Doane Academy) in Burlington, New Jersey, and Mme. Canda's
Girls' School in New York City. On April 20, 1864,[4] she
married Sidney Smith Harris (1832–1892) of New York, a lawyer, with whom she had
two children, a son, Sidney and a daughter, Natalie.After the death of her
husband in 1892, she spent most of her time in Europe, dying in Pau, Pyrénées-Atlantiques, France in 1925.
A devout Episcopalian, who late in
life, some sources suggest, converted to Roman Catholicism, But, New
Catholic World, Volume 86 (1908), in a review of Tents of
Wickedness wrote, "The keen appreciation, the deep sympathy,
shown in the telling of that story bespeak a personal note, something perhaps
of what the author herself has experienced in her way to the Catholic
Church." In Catholic world, Volume 68 (1899) it states,
"we have received the following notice of an author, Mrs. Miriam Coles
Harris, who entered the one true church about two years ago ... Unlike most
American authors, Mrs. Harris has not been a contributor to magazines, having done
no writing outside of her novels with the exception of two devotional books
written while she was a member of the Anglican Church. Her most recent
publication, A Corner of Spain, is therefore somewhat of a
departure ... When Mrs. Harris made the visit to Spain, she was not a
Catholic." However that information is inaccurate, she had written many
magazine articles. She published a number of children's stories with a
religious theme, prior to her first novel. These included Philip and
Arthur (1859), Ash Wednesday in the Nursery (1859)
and Saturday Afternoon (1859). Coles-Harris
also wrote many magazine articles. These include "A Playwrights
Novitiate" in the Atlantic
Monthly (1894), on writing for the stage, and
another in Lippincott's Magazine (1893),
criticizing the undue exaltation of what she called "Seventh Commandment novels".