Chase grew up in Maine, graduating from the University of Maine in 1909. Three autobiographical works describe her background and early experiences: A Goodly Heritage (1932), A Goodly Fellowship (1939), and The White Gate: Adventures in the Imagination of a Child (1954). After teaching school, she went on to the University of Minnesota, where she obtained a Ph.D. in English in 1922. She was an assistant professor there from 1922 to 1926, devoting part of this period to postdoctoral study in England. She maintained her interest in England, where she frequently summered, and wrote of it in a book of light essays, This England (1936). From 1926 until her retirement in 1955, she taught at Smith College, Northampton, Massachusetts.

Chase began her writing career with books for children such as The Girl from the Big Horn Country (1916) and Mary Christmas (1926). Her first novel, Uplands (1927), was followed by two of her most powerful novels: Mary Peters (1934) and Silas Crockett (1935), both about Maine seafaring families. Dawn in Lyonesse (1938) is an interesting retelling of the Tristan and Isolde story in a modern New England setting. She also wrote literary criticism, biblical studies, essays, and instruction in the craft of writing.