Eva March Tappan was an American educator, historian, and author best known for making history and classic literature accessible to young readers. Born on December 26, 1854, in Blackstone, Massachusetts, she was the only child of Reverend Edmund March Tappan and Lucretia Logée. Tappan attended Vassar College, graduating in 1875, where she was elected to Phi Beta Kappa and served as an editor of the Vassar Miscellany. After graduation, she began a career in education, teaching Latin and German at Wheaton College from 1875 to 1880. She later pursued graduate studies in English literature at the University of Pennsylvania.

Tappan continued her career as an educator throughout the late nineteenth century, serving as associate principal of Raymond Academy in Camden, New Jersey, from 1884 to 1894 and later heading the English department at the English High School in Worcester, Massachusetts. Her experience in the classroom strongly influenced her approach to writing. Rather than presenting history simply as a collection of dates and events, Tappan frequently told it through vivid narratives, biographies, legends, and stories of notable men and women, helping younger readers encounter the past in an engaging and approachable way.

Over the course of her literary career, Tappan wrote and edited numerous works of history, literature, and children's education. Her books included In the Days of Alfred the Great, In the Days of William the Conqueror, American Hero Stories, The Chaucer Story Book, The Story of the Greek People, The Story of the Roman People, When Knights Were Bold, and Heroes of the Middle Ages. She also produced histories of English and American literature and collections intended to introduce children to important stories and historical figures. Tappan never married and devoted much of her life to education and writing. She died on January 29, 1930, at the age of seventy-five, leaving behind a substantial body of historical and literary works that continued to be read by generations of young students.