Louisa Revell was born Ellen Hart Smith on July 16, 1910 in Owensboro, Kentucky, the only child of a furniture store owner and a schoolteacher. Her mother having died when she was young, she was raised primarily by her father. Smith graduated from Miami University in the early 1930s, then returned to her Owensboro home to live with her father, two maiden cousins and an intimate friend, Margaret Elizabeth Evans. She spent her twenties writing a biography, Charles Carroll of Carrollton, which was published by Harvard University Press in 1942. Smith followed this book up in 1947 with the first of a series of mysteries featuring Miss Julia Tyler. Eschewing any personal publicity, she used the name Louisa Revell, and kept her own a secret, publishing seven Miss Julia mysteries in all. After the death of her father and cousins, Smith and Miss Evans continued to live together in the family house until her death on April 28, 1985.