Pansy was an American author. Her best-known works include Four Girls at Chautauqua, Chautauqua Girls at Home, Tip Lewis and His Lamp, Three People, Links in Rebecca's Life, Julia Ried, Ruth Erskine's Crosses, The King's Daughter, The Browning Boys, From Different Standpoints, Mrs. Harry Harper's Awakening, The Measure, and Spun from Fact. Alden also wrote the Westminster Teacher's primary lesson department, edited the Presbyterian Primary Quarterly and the children's journal Pansy, and published a serial story in the Herald and Presbyter of Cincinnati each winter. Alden was involved in Sunday school elementary teaching and oversaw more than a hundred children every Sunday for many years. Four of her books, Three People, The King's Daughter, One Commonplace Day, and Little Fishers and their Nets, were specifically about temperance, and the notion of total abstention persisted throughout her writings. Isabella Macdonald was born in Rochester, New York, to highly educated parents Isaac and Myra Spafford Macdonald. Her father supported the temperance and abolitionist movements, feeling that slavery was a sin. Her mother was committed to everything "pure and of good report." She was also engaged in temperance and had joined the Woman's Christian Temperance Union.