t money and a new bonnet" (640-41).
She abandons her first effort, "Beauty and Booty; or, The [Italian] Brigand's Bride," as unsatisfactory and tries writing about the world she knows, producing "a sketch of Yankee life and character." To her surprise, a magazine accepts it.. Although the piece is not published under her name, "Somehow it leaked out that Lucia Lammermoor had written a story for the Trumpet, to appear in the March number," and friends, neighbors, and mere acquaintances all buy copies. The story "became at once the sensation of the day in Topknot" (642). Soon, however, residents decide that they are the models for characters in the story, and begin trying to identify themselves. Consequently
as Topknot was a small country town, where not more than three events happened in a year -- as, moreover, differing herein from most New England villages, it had never experienced a live authoress in its midst before -- Lucia found she had, with the most harmless intentions imaginable, succeeded in raising a very respectable tempest in a teapot. (642)
Worse yet, the man Lucia cares about begins avoiding her, his "ideas of literary women [being] the usual vague but damaging ones of inky fingers, untidy hair, neglected families and henpecked husbands," along with the fear he might provide "raw material for stories" (644). Fortunately, a church event and a becoming pink dress bring the two together again: "And so they were married, and [she] darned [his] stockings and sewed on his shirt-buttons, and never, never wrote for the magazines any more, and they lived happily for ever afterward" (645).
It's difficult to determine how much of "Cacoethes Scribendi" is autobiographical and how much merely a commentary on authorship and women's writing. Unlike her heroine, Mary was still single -- and had turned thirty that year. Whether her marital status was by choice or circumstance remains unknown, but the 1870 census showed her living with her parents -- her father was by then involved with local government, serving as the town clerk -- and a servant. It also records that Mary had amassed $1000 in "personal estate," presumably from a combination of writing and her salary at the bank. 
 The most extensive biography and commentary on some of Wells Smith's series fiction -- is Kimberly J. Wright, Redeeming a Life: A Study of the Life and Works of Mary P. Wells Smith (1840-1930), PhD Thesis, University of Maryland College Park, 1998. Biographical material can also be found in William R. Gowen, "Jolly Good Times: Mary P. Wells Smith and Her Books for Young People," Newsboy 39.6 (Nov.-Dec. 2001): 11-16; Geri Strecker, "'And the public has been left to guess the secret': Questioning the Authorship of The Great Match, and Other Matches (1877), Nine 18.2 (Spring 2010): 11-37. Contemporaneous accounts include "Mrs. Mary P. Wells Smith," Literary World 9 (June 1, 1878): 16; Lucile Gulliver, "Mrs. Smith and Her Books," Horn Book 3 (August 1927): 32-38 (the article -- or a longer version -- was also published as Mary P. Wells and Her Books); Margaret B. Barnard, "Necrology: Mary P. Wells Smith," History and Proceedings of the Pocumtuck Valley Memorial Association 8 (1931): 19-21. One of the only biographical sketches online is Cary Sternick's "Mary P. Wells Smith and Her Series, Part 1", Thoughts of Bibliomaven, which is illustrated with photos from Gulliver's work.
The Wells family's genealogy is traced in Genealogical and Personal Memoirs Relating to the Families of the State of Massachusetts, vol. 2 (New York: Lewis Historical Publishing Company, 1910) and in Nancy Donnis's Dwight Nutting [Family] Tree, ancestry.com. Census and burial records provide additional information.
For the most part, citations will be limited to identifying quotes or sources other than those listed above and in note 2.
 Mary P. Wells Smith's reminiscences appear in the brief "Old Deerfield in Indian Times" Horn Book 3 (August 1927): 39-41 and in the first part of chapter 75 ("Mrs. Mary P. Wells Smith's Recollections") of Francis M. Thompson, History of Greenfield