Martha Joanna Reade Nash Lamb was born on August 13, 1826 or 1829, in Plainfield, Hampshire, Massachusetts.

She was an American author, editor, and historian. Educated at the Williston Seminary in Easthampton and Northampton High School, she published her first article, “A Visit to My Mother’s Birthplace,” in a local newspaper Hampshire Gazette in 1847. In 1857, she moved to Chicago with her husband where she helped found the Home for the Friendless and the Half-Orphan Asylum. In 1863, she became secretary to the U.S. Sanitary Commission Fair. After her divorce, she moved to New York City where she purchased The Magazine of American History and became its editor in 1883. She published a series of children's stories in 1869 and 1870. In the 1870s she also wrote a romance novel “Spicy”, several Christmas annuals, and articles on a wide array of subjects for Harper's Magazine and other periodicals. She also edited The Homes of America. She published “History of the City of New York: Its Origin, Rise, and Progress” (2 vols., 1877, 1880). Lamb was elected to membership in fifteen historical and learned societies in the United States and Europe. She was twice invited to the White House; President Grover Cleveland gave a dinner in her honour in 1886 and in 1889, President Benjamin Harrison recognized her contributions to the centennial celebration of Washington's inauguration.

In 1852, she married Charles A. Lamb (1830-). The marriage ended in divorce around 1866. She died on January 2, 1893, in New York, New York.