Bates was born in Falmouth, Massachusetts, the daughter of a Congregational pastor. She graduated from Wellesley College in 1880 and for many years was a professor of English literature at Wellesley. While teaching there, she was elected a member of the newly formed Pi Gamma Mu honor society for the social sciences because of her interest in history and politics, which she had also studied.

Bates lived in Wellesley with Katharine Coman, who was a history and political economy teacher and founder of the Wellesley College school Economics department. The pair lived together for twenty-five years until Coman's death in 1915. It is debated whether their relationship was an intimate lesbian relationship as different sources maintain Isle of Lesbos: Poetry of Katharine Lee Bates or platonic (sometimes called a "Boston marriage") as the local historical society of her birthplace maintains. In the years following Coman's death, Bates wrote Yellow Clover: A Book of Remembrance, to Katharine Coman. Almost all the poems there contained refer to the relationship between Bates and Coman.

The first draft of "America the Beautiful" was hastily jotted down in a notebook during the summer of 1893, which Bates spent teaching English at Colorado College in Colorado Springs, Colorado. Later she remembered:

One day some of the other teachers and I decided to go on a trip to 14,000-foot Pikes Peak. We hired a prairie wagon. Near the top we had to leave the wagon and go the rest of the way on mules. I was very tired. But when I saw the view, I felt great joy. All the wonder of America seemed displayed there, with the sea-like expanse.

The words to her only famous poem first appeared in print in The Congregationalist, a weekly journal, for Independence Day, 1895. The poem reached a wider audience when her revised version was printed in the Boston Evening Transcript on November 19, 1904. Her final expanded version was written in 1913.

The hymn has been sung to several tunes, but the familiar one used by Ray Charles is by Samuel A. Ward (1847—1903), written for his hymn "Materna" (1882).

Bates was a prolific author of many volumes of poetry, travel books, and children's books. She popularized Mrs. Claus in her poem Goody Santa Claus on a Sleigh Ride from the collection Sunshine and other Verses for Children (1889).

Her family home on Falmouth's Main Street is preserved by the Falmouth Historical Society. There is also a street named in her honor, "Katharine Lee Bates Road" in Falmouth. Bates lived as an adult on Centre Street in Newton, Massachusetts. A historic plaque marks the site of her home.

Bates has two schools named in her honor, the Katharine Lee Bates Elementary School, located on Elmwood Road in Wellesley, Massachusetts and the Katharine Lee Bates Elementary School, located in Colorado Springs, Colorado. The latter was founded in 1957.

Bates died in Wellesley, Massachusetts, on March 28, 1929, aged 69, and is buried in Oak Grove Cemetery at Falmouth. She was inducted into the Songwriters Hall of Fame in 1970.

• (Editor) The Wedding Day Book, Lothrop (Boston, MA), 1882, published as The Wedding-Day Book, with the Congratulations of the Poets, Lothrop (Boston, MA), 1895.
• The College Beautiful, and Other Poems, Houghton (Cambridge, MA), 1887.
• (Editor) Coleridge's Ancient Mariner, Leach, Shewell & Sanborn (Boston, MA), 1889.
• Rose and Thorn, Congregational Sunday-School and Publishing Society (Boston, MA), 1889.
• (Editor) Ballad Book, Leach, Shewell & Sanborn (Boston, MA), 1890, reprinted, Books for Libraries Press (Freeport, NY), 1969.
• Hermit Island, Lothrop (Boston, MA), 1890.
• Sunshine, and Other Verses for Children, Wellesley Alumnae (Boston, MA), 1890.
• The English Religious Drama, Macmillan (New York, NY), 1893, reprinted, Kennikat Press (Port Washington, NY), 1966.
• (Editor) Shakespeare's Comedy of The Merchant of Venice, Leach, Shewell & Sanborn (Boston, MA), 1894.
• (Editor) Shakespeare's Comedy of A Midsummer Night's Dream, Leach, Shewell & Sanborn (Boston, MA), 1895.
• (Editor) Shakespeare's Comedy of As You Like It, Leach, Shewell & Sanborn (Boston, MA), 1896.
• (Compiler) Browning Studies: Bibliography, Robinson (Boston, MA), 1896.
• (Editor) Stories from the Chap-Book, Stone (Chicago, IL), 1896.
• (Compiler with Lydia Boker Godfrey) English Drama: A Working Basis, Robinson(Boston, MA), 1896, enlarged as Shakespeare: Selective Bibliography and Biographical Notes, compiled by Bates and Lilla Weed, Wellesley College (Wellesley, MA), 1913.
• American Literature, Chautauqua Press (New York, NY), 1897.
• Spanish Highways and Byways, Macmillan (New York, NY), 1900.
• (Editor) Keats's The Eve of St. Agnes, and Other Poems, Silver, Burdett, (New York, NY), 1902.
• (Editor and author of introduction) The Works of Nathaniel Hawthorne, fourteen volumes, Crowell (New York, NY), 1902.
• (Editor) Hamilton Wright Mabie, Norse Stories Retold from the Eddas, Rand, McNally (Chicago, IL), 1902.
• (Compiler with Katharine Coman) English History Told by English Poets, Macmillan (New York, NY), 1902, reprinted, Books for Libraries Press (Freeport, NY), 1969.
• (As James Lincoln) Relishes of Rhyme, Richard G. Badger (Boston, MA), 1903.
• (Editor) The Poems of Alice and Phoebe Cary, Crowell (New York, NY), 1903.
• (Editor) John Ruskin, The King of the Golden River; or, the Black Brothers: A Legend of Stiria, illustrated by John C. Johansen, Rand, McNally (Chicago, IL), 1903.
• (Editor) Tennyson's The Princess, American Book Co. (New York, NY), 1904.
• (Editor) Tennyson's Gareth and Lynette, Lancelot and Elaine, The Passing of Arthur, Sibley (Boston, MA), 1905.
• (Author of introduction) Nathaniel Hawthorne, Our Old Home: A Series of English Sketches, Crowell (New York, NY), 1906.
• From Gretna Green to Land's End: A Literary Journey in England, photographs by Katharine Coman, Crowell (New York, NY), 1907.
• (Translator, with Cornelia Frances Bates) Gustavo Adolfo Becquer, Romantic Legends of Spain, Crowell (New York), 1909, reprinted, Books for Libraries Press (Freeport, NY), 1971.
• The Story of Chaucer's Canterbury Pilgrims, Rand, McNally (Chicago, IL), 1909.
• America the Beautiful, and Other Poems, Crowell (New York, NY), 1911.
• (Compiler and editor) The New Irish Drama, Drama League of America (Chicago, IL), 1911.
• In Sunny Spain with Pilarica and Rafael, Dutton (New York, NY), 1913.
• Chaucer's Canterbury Pilgrims, Retold by Katharine Lee Bates, illustrated by Angus MacDonall, color plates by Milo Winter, Rand, McNally (Chicago, IL), 1914.
• Fairy Gold, Dutton, (New York, NY), 1916.
• (Author of introduction) Helen Sanborn, Anne of Brittany, Lothrop, Lee & Shepard (Boston, MA), 1917.
• (Editor) Thomas Heywood, A Woman Killed with Kindness, and the Faire Maide of the West, Heath (Boston, MA), 1917.
• The Retinue, and Other Poems, Dutton (New York, NY), 1918.
• Sigurd Our Golden Collie, and Other Comrades of the Road, Dutton (New York, NY), 1919.
• (Editor) Once Upon a Time; A Book of Old-Time Fairy Tales, illustrated by Margaret Evans Price, Rand, McNally (Chicago, IL), 1921.
• Yellow Clover, A Book of Remembrance, Dutton (New York, NY), 1922.
• Little Robin Stay-Behind, and Other Plays in Verse for Children, Woman's Press (New York, NY), 1923.
• The Pilgrim Ship, Woman's Press (New York, NY), 1926.
• (Editor) Tom Thumb and Other Old-Time Fairy Tales, illustrated by Price, Rand, McNally (Chicago, IL), 1926.
• America the Dream, Crowell (New York, NY), 1930.
• An Autobiography, in Brief, of Katharine Lee Bates, Enterprise Press (Falmouth, MA), 1930.
• Selected Poems of Katharine Lee Bates, edited by Marion Pelton Guild, Houghton Mifflin (Boston, MA), 1930.
• (Author of introduction) Helen Corke, The World's Family, Oxford University Press (New York, NY), 1930.
• (Editor) Jack the Giant-Killer, Rand, McNally (Chicago, IL), 1937.
• (Editor) Jack and the Beanstalk; also Toads and Diamonds, Rand, McNally (Chicago, IL), 1937.
• America the Beautiful, illustrated by Neil Waldman, Atheneum (New York, NY), 1993.
• O Beautiful For Spacious Skies, edited by Sara Jane Boyers, illustrated by Wayne Thiebaud, Chronicle Books (San Francisco, CA), 1994.

Contributor to Historic Towns of New England, edited by Lyman P. Powell, Putnam (New York, NY), 1898. Contributor to periodicals, sometimes under the pseudonym James Lincoln, including Atlantic Monthly, Congregationalist, Boston Evening Transcript, Christian Century, Contemporary Verse, Lippincott's and Delineator.

Collections of Bates's manuscripts are housed by the Arthur and Elizabeth Schlesinger Library on the History of Women in America, Radcliffe College, Cambridge, MA; Falmouth Historical Society, Falmouth, MA; Houghton Library, Harvard University, Cambridge, MA; Wellesley College Archives, Wellesley, MA.

• Dorothy Burgess, Dream and Deed: The Story of Katharine Lee Bates (Norman, Oklahoma: University of Oklahoma Press, 1952)
• entry on Katharine Lee Bates in Notable American Women : the modern period : a biographical dictionary, edited by Barbara Sicherman, Carol Hurd Green with Ilene Kantrov, Harriette Walker (Cambridge, Mass. : Belknap Press of Harvard University Press, 1980)
• Judith Schwarz, "Yellow Clover: Katharine Lee Bates and Katharine Coman," Frontiers: A Journal of Women's Studies, 4:1 (Spring 1979), pp 59—67
• Almanac of Famous People, sixth edition, Gale (Detroit, MI), 1998.
• Dictionary of Literary Biography, Volume 71: American Literary Critics and Scholars, 1880-1900, Gale (Detroit, MI), 1988.
• Encyclopedia of World Biography, Volume 2, Gale (Detroit, MI), 1998.
• Gay and Lesbian Literature, St. James Press (Detroit, MI), 1998.
• Vida Dutton Scudder, On Journey, E.P. Dutton (New York, NY), 1937.
• Drury, Michael, "Why She Wrote America's Favorite Song," Reader's Digest, July 1993, pp. 90-93.
• Price, Deb. The Bellingham Herald, July 4, 1998: "Two women's love made 'America' Beautiful".
• Christian Science Monitor, July 19, 1930.
• The Dial, January 16, 1912.
• International Book Review, June 24, 1924.
• The Nation, November 30, 1918.
• New York Times, July 14, 1918; August 17, 1930.

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