Mercy Otis Warren was born in Barnstable, Massachusetts, where she lived until 1754, when she married James Warren and moved to Plymouth, Massachusetts. There, Mercy Otis Warren found herself at the center of a lively Patriot family: both her husband and her brother James Otis took active parts in Massachusetts politics, and the Warren home became a common meeting place for revolutionaries. She also participated in the Patriot cause, beginning with the 1772 publication of her play The Adulateur, the first in a long line of similar propagandistic pieces published anonymously. She developed friendships with Abigail and John Adams at this time and corresponded with both throughout her life. Warren continued to write and publish after the war, issuing a volume of poetry under her own name in 1790 and in 1805 publishing her three-volume History of the Rise, Progress and Termination of the American Revolution.

Sources: Garraty, John A. and Mark C. Carnes, eds. American National Biography. New York: Oxford University Press, 1999.

James, Edward T., Janet Wilson James, and Paul S. Boyer, eds. Notable American Women, 1607-1950: A Biographical Dictionary. Cambridge, Mass.: Belknap Press of Harvard University Press, 1971.