Francis Stevens
Francis Stevens, born Gertrude Myrtle Barrows on September 18, 1883, in Minneapolis, Minnesota, was an American author who made significant contributions to early science fiction and dark fantasy. Initially trained as a stenographer, Stevens pursued art with hopes of becoming an illustrator but transitioned into writing after facing personal challenges, including the death of her first husband and the responsibility of supporting her daughter and mother. She began her writing career in her teens, publishing her first story in 1904 under the name G. M. Barrows, but later adopted the pseudonym Francis Stevens.
Stevens is best known for her novels, including "The Citadel of Fear" and "The Heads of Cerberus," which showcased her unique blend of adventure and speculative fiction, drawing comparisons to notable authors such as H. Rider Haggard and H. P. Lovecraft. Despite a brief publishing career, her works are recognized for their pioneering elements of horror-tinged fantasy, influencing the genre's development. Stevens's life remains somewhat enigmatic, with limited documentation available about her later years, including her relocation to California in the 1920s and her passing in 1948. Her legacy endures as a significant, though often overlooked, figure in the history of speculative fiction.
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Francis Stevens
Author
- Born: September 18, 1883
- Birthplace: Minneapolis, Minnesota
- Died: 1948
Biography
The woman who would write as Francis Stevens was born Gertrude Myrtle Barrows in Minneapolis, Minnesota, on September 18, 1883, the daughter of Charles Barrows and Carrie Hatch. She worked as a stenographer after leaving school, but studied art in night school for several years in hopes of becoming an illustrator.
The remaining details of Stevens’s life are poorly documented. It is known that she married English journalist Stewart Bennett and lived with him in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania. The couple had one child, a daughter, but Bennett died within a few months of his child’s birth. In order to support her daughter and herself, Stevens went to work as a secretary at the University of Pennsylvania and typed papers for students after hours. With the death of her father, she found herself supporting her disabled mother as well. These circumstances may have led her to try her hand at writing. At some point Stevens apparently remarried and may have lived in Boston, Massachusetts. She moved to California during the 1920’s and seems to have stopped writing. Although it was long believed that she had disappeared under mysterious circumstances at the end of the 1930’s, it is now known that she died in California in 1948.
Stevens wrote her first published story when she was seventeen and working in a department store. Titled “The Curious Experiences of Thomas Dunbar,” it appeared in the March, 1904, issue of the magazine Argosy under the name G. M. Barrows. Her second known story, “The Nightmare,” followed years later in the April 14, 1917, issue of the same magazine. Here she wrote as Francis Stevens, and continued to do so throughout her short career.
Stevens’s first novel, The Citadel of Fear, ran as a serial in Argosy in 1918, and resembled the lost race adventure novels of H. Rider Haggard. Her second novel, The Heads of Cerberus, was serialized in Thrill Book the following year, and envisioned the bleak world of twenty-second century Philadelphia. Her last known work, a short novel called Sunfire, again recalled Haggard but struck readers as carelessly developed.
Stevens drew inspiration from a variety of sources in what critics now categorize as science fiction and various subgenres of fantasy. She has been compared not only to Haggard but also to A. Merritt and H. P. Lovecraft, and some readers have believed that “Francis Stevens” was the popular Merritt’s pseudonym. In fact, Stevens is now credited with pioneering the horror-tinged genre of dark fantasy that her better-known male contemporaries Merritt and Lovecraft developed more fully.