Estella May Boot was born December 14, 1875, in Wilton Junction, Muscatine County, Iowa. She became a school teacher at age sixteen and graduated from the University of South Dakota in 1901, majoring in Latin, Greek, and Sanskrit. She took her M.A. from Northwestern University in 1909, in Latin and English. She taught at Kansas State University for eight years before joining the English Department faculty at the University of Iowa in 1917. She pursued graduate work in Science and English at Kansas State College, Columbia University, and the University of Chicago. Her work for a Ph.D. was complete, except for a dissertation. She retired as assistant professor from the University of Iowa in 1949 but continued tutoring foreign students in English for the next twenty years.

The Estella Boot Fellowship was established on the occasion of her 92nd birthday in 1967, in honor of her long membership in American Association of University Women (AAUW). Estella Boot died August 29, 1969, at age 93.