Author: Francis Stevens

Gertrude Barrows Bennett (1884 – 1948), known by the pseudonym Francis Stevens, was a pioneering author of fantasy and (proto-)science fiction. Bennett wrote a number of stories between 1917 and 1923, and has been called "the woman who invented dark fantasy." (Note that Clare Winger Harris, the first woman to contribute under her own name to the first sf magazine, Amazing Stories, would not begin writing until 1926.) Stevens was an important influence on later sf writers, including A. Merritt.