Pollyanna Pollyanna Pollyanna is a best-selling 1913 novel by Eleanor H. Porter that is now considered a classic of children's literature, with the title character's name becoming a popular term for someone with the same very optimistic outlook: a subconscious bias towards the positive is often described as the Pollyanna principle. The book was such a success that Porter soon produced a sequel, "Pollyanna Grows Up" (1915). Eleven more "Pollyanna" sequels, known as "Glad Books", were later published, most of them written by Elizabeth Borton or Harriet Lummis Smith. Further sequels followed, including "Pollyanna Plays the Game" by Colleen L. Reece,
Eleanor Gates Eleanor Gates Eleanor Gates (26 September 1874 – 7 March 1951) was an American playwright who created seven plays that were staged on Broadway. Her best known work was the play "The Poor Little Rich Girl", which was produced by her husband in 1913 and went on to be made as films for Mary Pickford in 1917 and for Shirley Temple in 1936. Eleanor Gates was born on 26 September 1874 in Shakopee, Minnesota, southwest of Minneapolis. She later described her early life in her novel "The Biography of a Prairie Girl". Gates married another playwright, Richard Walton Tully, in