Agnes Laut developed an extensive career as the author of many books of fiction and non-fiction about the history of North America.

Born in Stanley Township, ON, Agnes Christina Laut was only two years old when her family relocated to Winnipeg, MB. She completed regular school at the age of fifteen, and worked as a substitute teacher in a prairie school, although she was too young to earn a teacher's certificate. After several years of teaching in Winnipeg, she enrolled at the University of Manitoba but was forced to withdraw in her second year due to ill health. She then turned to writing and was published in the and the ; she was employed at the latter as an editorial writer from 1895 to 1897.

After two years spent "tramping" across the continent and contributing to American, English, and Canadian periodicals, she published her first novel, , in 1900. In order to improve her health and be closer to her publishers, she moved in 1901 to Wassaic, in upstate New York, her home for the remainder of her life. She often visited and wrote about Canada and spent many summers visiting the Rockies and the Selkirk Mountains.

As an ardent nationalist, she was asked by the Toronto-based to investigate labour and racial issues in British Columbia; in 1919 she travelled to Mexico as secretary to the Childhood Conservation League. Her full-length volumes were primarily biographies and histories about early North America, from the fur trade to sea voyages and rail expansion. Agnes died in 1936 and was buried in Wassaic, NY.