Born in Hampstead, London on 24 January 1864, Harraden studied in Dresden, at Cheltenham Ladies’ College in Gloucestershire and at Queen’s College and Bedford College in London, and received a BA degree. She travelled extensively in Europe and the United States and in 1893 found fame with her debut novel, Ships That Pass in the Night, a love story set in a tuberculosis sanatorium. This was a best-seller but she failed to achieve similar success with subsequent books which included novels, short stories and books for children.
Harraden spent several summer holidays lodging at The Green Dragon inn at Little Stretton, Shropshire, walking and writing. Her memories of this and the landlady, a Mrs Benbow led to her writing a short story, At the Green Dragon, published in 1894.
Harraden involved herself greatly with the women’s rights movement, joining the Women's Social and Political Union, the Women Writers' Suffrage League and Women’s Tax Resistance League and publishing her work in the suffragette paper Votes for Women. This involvement is reflected in much of her fiction. She also involved herself as a reader for the Oxford English Dictionary, and this, too is reflected in her fiction: The Scholar’s Daughter (1906) is set among lexicographers. In 1930, she received a civil list pension for her literary work. She died at Barton-on-Sea on Monday 5 May 1936.