Ann S. Stephens

Ann Sophia Stephens was born on March 30, 1810, in Derby, Connecticut;{{cite book |title=In her own voice: nineteenth-century American women essayists |last=Linkon |first=Sherry Lee |year=1997 |publisher=Taylor & Francis |url=https://books.google.com/books?id=VcDuCCZVq_IC |isbn=0-8153-2652-1 |page=114 }} she was the daughter of Ann and John Winterbotham, son of William Winterbotham. He was the manager of a woolen mill owned by Col. David Humphreys. Her mother died early and she was brought up by her mother's sister, who eventually became her stepmother. She was educated at a dame school in South Britain, Connecticut, and started writing at an early age.{{cite book |title=The National cyclopaedia of American biography |year=1900 |publisher=J. T. White company |page=20 }} She married Edward Stephens, a printer from Plymouth, Massachusetts, in 1831 and they relocated to Portland, Maine.{{cite web |url=http://www.librarycompany.org/women/portraits/stephens_ann.htm |title=Portraits of American Women Writers |work=Ann S. Stephens |access-date=September 21, 2009}}

The actress Clara Bloodgood was the daughter of their son, Edward Stephens, a well known New York lawyer.Edward Stephens (obituary) New York Times October 2, 1913, p. 11.

File:Malaeska.jpg

Edward established a grocery business in Portland. When it failed, Stephens and her husband co-founded Portland Magazine, with herself as editor and him as publisher. Author and critic John Neal, whom she met shortly after her arrival in Portland, mentored her in this undertaking.{{cite thesis | last = Richards | first = Irving T. | date = 1933 | title = The Life and Works of John Neal | type = PhD | publisher = Harvard University | location = Cambridge, Massachusetts | url = http://id.lib.harvard.edu/alma/990038995990203941/catalog | oclc = 7588473 | page = 784–785}} The magazine was a monthly literary periodical where some of her early work first appeared. They sold it in 1837.

When Edward secured an appointment at a New York City custom house, the couple moved to that city. Stephens garnered influence in New York literary circles and took on editorial positions with a number of the city's periodicals.{{cite thesis | last = Richards | first = Irving T. | date = 1933 | title = The Life and Works of John Neal | type = PhD | publisher = Harvard University | location = Cambridge, Massachusetts | url = http://id.lib.harvard.edu/alma/990038995990203941/catalog | oclc = 7588473 | page = 902–903}} She became editor of The Ladies Companion and adopted the humorous pseudonym Jonathan Slick. Over the next few years she wrote more than twenty-five serial novels plus short stories and poems for several well known periodicals which included Godey's Lady's Book and Graham's Magazine.Tebbel, John. A History of Book Publishing in the United States – Volume I: The Creation of an Industry (1630-1865). New York City: R.R. Bowker Co., 1972. p. 248. In 1843, she and her husband purchased the Brother Jonathan literary journal and hired Neal to serve as editor.{{cite book | last = Fleischmann | first = Fritz | title = A Right View of the Subject: Feminism in the Works of Charles Brockden Brown and John Neal | publisher = Verlag Palm & Enke Erlangen | location = Erlangen, Germany | year = 1983 | isbn = 978-3-7896-0147-7 | page = 188}} Her first novel Fashion and Famine was published in 1854. She started her own magazine Mrs Stephens' Illustrated New Monthly in 1856, it was published by her husband.{{cite book |title=Notable American women, 1607–1950 |last=James |first=Edward|author2=Janet Wison James |author3=Paul S. Boyer |year=1971 |publisher=Harvard University Press |url=https://archive.org/details/notableamericanw02jame_0 |url-access=registration |quote=Ann Sophia Stephens died 1886. |isbn=0-674-62734-2 |pages=[https://archive.org/details/notableamericanw02jame_0/page/360 360]–362 }} The magazine merged with Peterson's Magazine a few years later.

The term "dime novel" originated with Stephens's Malaeska, the Indian Wife of the White Hunter, printed in the first book in Beadle & Adams's Beadle’s Dime Novels series, dated June 9, 1860. The novel was a reprint of Stephens's earlier serial that appeared in the Ladies' Companion magazine in February, March, and April 1839. Later, the Grolier Club listed Malaeska as the most influential book of 1860.Nelson, Randy F. The Almanac of American Letters. Los Altos, California: William Kaufmann, Inc., 1981: 201. {{ISBN|0-86576-008-X}}. Some of her other work includes High Life in New York (1843), Alice Copley: A Tale of Queen Mary's Time (1844), The Diamond Necklace and Other Tale (1846), The Old Homestead (1855), The Rejected Wife (1863) and A Noble Woman (1871).

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• Alice Copley: A Tale of Queen Mary's Time
• A Noble Woman
• Bellehood and Bondage
• Bertha's Engagement
• [https://www.gutenberg.org/ebooks/70134 The Curse of Gold], 1869
• The Diamond Necklace and Other Tale
• The Deserted Wife
• Doubly False
• [https://www.gutenberg.org/ebooks/40114 Fashion and Famine] 1854
• [https://www.gutenberg.org/ebooks/34500 The Gold Brick], 1866
• The Gulf Between Them
• [https://www.gutenberg.org/ebooks/70851 The Heiress of Greenhurst: An autobiography], 1857
• [https://www.gutenberg.org/ebooks/39645 High Life in New York], 1873
• Katharine Allen; or, The Gold Brick
• [https://www.gutenberg.org/ebooks/73303 The Ladies' Complete Guide to Crochet, Fancy Knitting, and Needlework], 1854
• Lord Hope's Choice
• [https://www.gutenberg.org/ebooks/30247 Mabel's Mistake], 1868
• [https://www.gutenberg.org/ebooks/46160 Malaeska, the Indian Wife of the White Hunter], 1860
• Married in Haste
• [https://www.gutenberg.org/ebooks/70220 Mary Derwent: A Tale of Wyoming and Mohawk Valleys], 1858
• [https://www.gutenberg.org/ebooks/70151 Myra: The Child of Adoption], 1860
• [https://www.gutenberg.org/ebooks/30111 A Noble Woman], 1871
• [https://www.gutenberg.org/ebooks/37168 Norston's Rest], 1877
• [https://www.gutenberg.org/ebooks/29862 The Old Countess], 1873
• [https://www.gutenberg.org/ebooks/8078 The Old Homestead], 1855
• Palaces and Prisons
• [https://www.gutenberg.org/ebooks/30245 Phemie Frost's Experiences], 1874
• Pictorial History of the War for the Union, [https://www.gutenberg.org/ebooks/72340 vol.1] 1863, [https://www.gutenberg.org/ebooks/74187 vol.2] 1866
• [https://www.gutenberg.org/ebooks/39278 The Portland Sketch Book], 1836
• [https://www.gutenberg.org/ebooks/70023 The Reigning Belle], 1885
• The Rejected Wife
• Ruby Gray's Strategy
• [https://www.gutenberg.org/ebooks/36027 Silent Struggles], 1865
• The Soldiers' Orphans
• [https://www.gutenberg.org/ebooks/47237 Sybil Chase; or, The Valley Ranche], 1861
• The Wife's Secret
• [https://www.gutenberg.org/ebooks/36374 Wives and Widows], 1869
• The Lady Mary

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{{Citation

| editor1-last = McHenry

| editor1-first = Robert

| title = Famous American Women: A Biographical Dictionary from Colonial Times to the Present

| publisher = Courier Dover Publications

| page = 392

| edition = 2nd

| year = 1980

| isbn = 0486245233

| url = https://books.google.com/books?id=n9SZh8eDtt0C&pg=PA392

| postscript= .

}}

}}

{{Portal|Biography}}

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• [http://dimenovels.lib.niu.edu/islandora/search/%20?type=dismax&f%5b0%5d=mods_name_author_ms%3A%22Stephens%2C%20Ann%20S.%20%28Ann%20Sophia%29%2C%201810-1886%22&sort=mods_dateIssued_dt%20asc Works by Ann S. Stephens] at [http://dimenovels.lib.niu.edu/ Nickels and Dimes from Northern Illinois University]
• {{Gutenberg author | id=3257 | name=Ann Sophia Stephens}}
• {{Internet Archive author|sname=Ann Sophia Stephens}}
• {{Find a Grave|8604103|accessdate=August 9, 2010}}
• {{Librivox author |id=18104}}

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Category:1810 births

Category:1886 deaths

Category:19th-century American novelists

Category:American women novelists

Category:Novelists from Connecticut

Category:19th-century American women writers

Category:Dime novelists

Category:People from Derby, Connecticut