One of eleven children of the publisher George Palmer Putnam and his wife Victorine Haven Putnam, she received her bachelor's degree in 1878 from Cornell University (in 1873 Emma Sheffield Eastman had been the first woman to graduate from Cornell University). Putnam wrote a number of historical works and consulted original sources in Dutch, French, and German, as well as English. She also wrote a biography of her eldest sibling Mary Corinna Putnam Jacobi, who was a famous physician and suffragist.
as editor with Eva Palmer Brownell, Maud Wilder Goodwin, and Alice Carrington Royce: Historic New York. Vol. 1, 1897, vol. 2, 1898. G.P. Putnam's sons.
as translator with Oscar Albert Bierstadt: History of the people of the Netherlands. Vol. 5 vols., 1898–1912. G. P. Putnam's sons.; a translation and abridgment of the 8-volume Geschiedenis van het Nederlandsche volk by Petrus Johannes Blok