Mary Noailles Murfree was born to William Law and Fanny Priscilla (Dickinson) Murfree near Murfreesboro, Tennessee, on January 24, 1850. She studied at the Nashville Female Institute and at the Chegaray Institute in Philadelphia in addition to reading widely on her own. Murfree began her literary career under the pseudonym Charles Edgar Craddock, although her editors and publishers knew her as M. N. Murfree. In late 1884, the editor of the Atlantic Monthly (Thomas Aldrich) approached Craddock about writing a serial during the coming year. He met Craddock in person the following March, and Murfree continued her career under her own name. Although she wrote on a variety of subjects, she achieved her greatest fame with her stories about the Tennessee mountains. Among her best known works are In the Tennessee Mountains (1884), Down the Ravine (1885), The Prophet of the Great Smoky Mountain (1885), In the Clouds (1886), The Mystery of Witchface Mountain (1895), The Young Mountaineers (1897), The Champion (1902), The Frontiersman (1905), and The Fair Mississippian (1908). Mary Murfree died on July 21, 1922, in Murfreesboro, Tennessee and is buried in Murfreesboro's Evergreen Cemetery.

Fanny Noailles Dickinson Murfree was born to William Law and Fanny Priscilla (Dickinson) Murfree near Murfreesboro, Tennessee, on August 2, 1846. She was also an author, but never achieved her sister's prominence. Her best known work, Felicia: A Novel, appeared in 1891. Fanny Murfree died on November 25, 1941, and is buried in Murfreesboro's Evergreen Cemetery.