The Old Countess (Esprios Classics) : or, The Two Proposals

Ann Sophia Stephens (1810-1886) was an American novelist and magazine editor.

She was the author of dime novels and is credited as the progenitor of that genre.

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 and Graham's Magazine.