Malaeska: The Indian Wife of the White Hunter

Ann Sophia Stephens (1813-1886), who also wrote under the pseudonym Jonathan Slick, was an American novelist. Born in Derby, Connecticut, she was an author of dime novels and is credited as the progenitor of that genre. Her work was also serialized in Godey’s Lady’s Book, The Ladies’ Companion, and Graham’s Magazine. The term “dime novel” originated with Stephens’s Malaeska: 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 of 1839. Later, the Grolier Club listed Malaeska as the most influential book of 1860. Her other works include: High Life in New York (1843), Alice Copley: A Tale of Queen Mary’s Time (1844), The Diamond Necklace and Other Tales (1846), Fashion and Famine (1854), The Old Homestead (1855), The Rejected Wife (1863) and A Noble Woman (1871).