Religious constraints play a key role in some of her works. She later finished her education at West Brattleboro Seminary. She passed the greater part of her life in Massachusetts and Vermont.

Freeman began writing stories and verse for children while still a teenager to help support her family and was quickly successful. Her best known work was written in the 1880s and 1890s while she lived in Randolph. She produced more than two dozen volumes of published short stories and novels. She is best known for two collections of stories, A Humble Romance and Other Stories (1887) and A New England Nun and Other Stories (1891). Her stories deal mostly with New England life and are among the best of their kind. Freeman is also remembered for her novel Pembroke (1894), and she contributed a notable chapter to the collaborative novel The Whole Family (1908). In 1902 she married Dr. Charles M. Freeman of Metuchen, New Jersey.

In April 1926, Freeman became the first recipient of the William Dean Howells Medal for Distinction in Fiction from the American Academy of Arts and Letters. She died in Metuchen and was interred in Hillside Cemetery in Scotch Plains, New Jersey.

 Works

·           Decorative Plaques (1883)

·           The Adventures of Ann (1886)

·           A Humble Romance and Other Stories (1887)

·           A New England Nun and Other Stories (1891)

·           Young Lucretia and Other Stories (1892)

·           The Pot of Gold and Other Stories (1892)

·           Jane Field (1892)

·           Giles Corey (1893)

·           Pembroke (1894)

·           Comfort Pease and Her Gold Ring (1895)

·           Madelon (1896)

·           Once Upon A Time (1897)

·           Jerome, a Poor Man (1897)

·           Silence, and other Stories (1898)

·           People of Our Neighborhood (1898)

·           In Colonial Times (1899)

·           The Jamesons (1899)

·           Evelina's Garden (1899)

·           The Love of Parson Lord and Other Stories (1900)

·           The Heart's Highway (1900)

·           Understudies (1901)

·           The Portion of Labor (1901)

·           A Far-Away Melody and Other Stories (1902)

·           Six Trees (1903)

·           The Wind in the Rose Bush and Other Stories of the Supernatural (1903)

·           The Givers and Other Stories (1904)

·           The Debtor (1905)

·           Doc Gordon (1906)

·           The Fair Lavinia, and Others (1907)

·           By the Light of the Soul (1907)

·           The Shoulders of Atlas (1908)

·           The Winning Lady, and Others (1909)

·           The Green Door (1910)

·           The Butterfly House (1912)

·           The Yates Pride (1912)

·           The Copy–Cat, and Other Stories (1914)

·           An Alabaster Box (1917)

·           Edgewater People (1918)

·           The Best Stories of Mary E. Wilkins (1927)

·           Collected Ghost Stories (1974)