Laura E. Richards was an American author born in 1850 in Boston, Massachusetts. She wrote many books, biographies and poems over her career. In 1917, she won the Pulitzer Prize for her biography of Julia Ward Howe. One of her most famous poems was "Eletelephony", a humorous poem about an elephant trying to use a telephone. Richards had one sister and was married with seven sons and one daughter. She died in 1943.