Pioneering author Francis Stevens was a groundbreaking innovator in the early twentieth century when the boundaries of science fiction and fantasy were still being defined and explored. She has been called the mother of dark fantasy, dubbed the most influential woman writing between the times of Mary Shelley, and C.L. Moore. She wrote contemporary to Burroughs, Merrit, and Lovecraft.
Francis Stevens, so named by her publisher, was born Gertrude M. Barrows in 1883. The multi-talented Gertrude aspired to be an illustrator but ultimately worked as a stenographer. Her first published short story, “The Curious Experience of Thomas Dunbar,” appeared in the pulp magazine Argosy in 1904, under G.M. Barrows, making her the first American woman to publish science fiction using her own name.
Gertrude was married in 1909 then widowed a year later. Her work was largely published in pulp magazines between 1917 and 1923, in efforts to support her young daughter and ailing mother during the influenza epidemic. She published six novels and seven short stories, prominent among them, Claimed, The Citadel of Fear, and “Friend Island” (All-Story Weekly, 1918). For unknown reasons, Gertrude quit writing in 1923 and disappeared from the public eye until her death in 1948.
