Harland grew up in Connecticut, son of a New York lawyer, and attended Harvard before visiting Italy for a year in 1882. He returned enamored of the Catholic Church but did not convert until he did so with his wife in 1897. He spent most of the last fifteen years of his life in London, where he produced a literary quarterly, The Yellow Book, as well as such well received novels as The Cardinal's Snuff Box (1898) and The Lady Paramount (1902).