Ann Sophia Stephens was an American

United States

The United States of America is a federal constitutional republic comprising fifty states and a federal district...

 novelist and magazine editor. She was the author of dime novel

Dime novel

Dime novel, though it has a specific meaning, has also become a catch-all term for several different forms of late 19th-century and early 20th-century U.S...

s and is credited as the progenitor of that genre.

Early life

Ann Sophia Stephens was born on March 30, 1810 in Derby, Connecticut

Derby, Connecticut

Derby is a city in New Haven County, Connecticut, United States. The population was 12,391 at the 2000 census. With of land area, Derby is Connecticut's smallest municipality.The city has a Metro-North railroad station called Derby – Shelton.-History:...

, she was the daughter of Ann and John Winterbotham, brother of William Winterbotham

William Winterbotham

Rev. William Winterbotham was a British Baptist minister and a political prisoner. He wrote some books introducing general information about China and the United States.-Biography:...

. He was the manager of a woolen mill owned by Col. David Humphreys

David Humphreys (soldier)

David Humphreys was a American Revolutionary War colonel and aide de camp to George Washington, American minister to Portugal and then to Spain, entrepreneur who brought Merino sheep to America and member of the Connecticut state legislature...

. 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

Dame school

A Dame School was an early form of a private elementary school in English-speaking countries. They were usually taught by women and were often located in the home of the teacher.- Britain :...

 in South Britain, Connecticut and started writing at an early age. She married Edward Stephens, a printer from Plymouth, Massachusetts, in 1831 and they relocated to Portland, Maine. The actress Clara Bloodgood

Clara Bloodgood

Clara Bloodgood Clara Bloodgood Clara Bloodgood (August 23, 1870 - December 5, 1907 was an American socialite who became a successful Broadway stage actress.-Early Life:Clara Stephens was born in Long Branch, New Jersey, the daughter of Edward and Annie (née Sutton) Stephens. Her father, a...

 was the daughter of their son, Edward Stephens, a well known New York lawyer.

Career

While in Portland, she and her husband co-founded, published and edited the Portland Magazine, a monthly literary periodical where some of her early work first appeared. The magazine was sold in 1837. They moved to New York where Ann took the job of editor to The Ladies Companion and where she could further her literary work. This was also the time she adopted the humorous pseudonym Jonathan Slick. Over the next few years she wrote over twenty-five serial novels plus short stories and poems for several well known periodicals which included Godey's Lady's Book

Godey's Lady's Book

Godey's Lady's Book, alternatively known as Godey's Magazine and Lady's Book, was a United States magazine which was published in Philadelphia. It was the most widely circulated magazine in the period before the Civil War. Its circulation rose from 70,000 in the 1840s to 150,000 in 1860...

and Graham's Magazine

Graham's Magazine

Graham's Magazine was a nineteenth century periodical based in Philadelphia established by George Rex Graham. It was alternatively referred to as Graham's Lady's and Gentleman's Magazine , Graham's Magazine of Literature and Art , Graham's American Monthly Magazine of Literature and Art Graham's...

. She started her own magazine Mrs Stephens' Illustrated New Monthly in 1856, it was published by her husband. The magazine merged with Peterson's Magazine a few years later. Her first novel Fashion and famine was published in 1854.

The term "dime novel" originated with Stephens's Maleaska, the Indian Wife of the White Hunter, printed in the first book in Beadle & Adams 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

Grolier Club

The Grolier Club is a private club and society of bibliophiles in New York City. Founded in January 1884, it is the oldest existing bibliophilic club in North America. The club is named after Jean Grolier de Servières, Viscount d'Aguisy, Treasurer General of France, whose library was famous; his...

listed Maleaska as the most influential book of 1860. 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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