Rewriting the Indian Tale: Science, Politics, and the Evolution of Ann S. Stephens's Indian Romances

Abstract

On June 9, 1860, the publishing firm of Irving P. Beadle and Company announced in theNew York Daily Tribunethe publication of their first dime novel, Ann S. Stephens'sMalaeska: The Indian Wife of the White Hunter. The narrative was advertised as “the best story of the day,” and its writer as “the star of American authors.” Stephens, whose name is familiar today only to scholars of the dime novel, was indeed well known to the reading public around the mid-19th Century. She was on the editorial board of several magazines, including the illustriousGraham's Magazine. She had published her own journal,Mrs. Stephens Illustrated New Monthly. And she wrote for a plethora of popular magazines, among others theColumbian Lady's and Gentleman's Magazine, theLadies' Wreath, Frank Leslie's Ladies' Gazette of Fashion, andPeterson's Magazine. Her 1854 urban melodramaFashion and Faminehad to be printed three times during the first month of publication to satisfy the demand of the public, and eventlually sold a record eighty thousand copies. Her historical novels, generally of European setting, were so successful that they were systematically printed in book form by the Philadelphia publisher T. B. Peterson after they had appeared serially in Charles J. Peterson's literary monthly. And Stephens had the sanction of the critics as well as the public: already in 1848 theAmerican Literary Magazinehad eulogized her by stating that “of the numerous female writers of our country, Mrs. Stephens is deservedly classed among the first.” Charles J. Peterson had declared in the pages ofGraham's Magazinethat “no writer, since Sir Walter Scott, had excelled her in … power of description.” And even Edgar Allan Poe had acknowledged that Stephens could “seize adroitly on salient incidents and present them with vividness to the eye,” was “not unskillful in delineation of character,” and could, in conclusion, be granted “the effervescence of high talent, if not exactly of genius.”