Bennett, Gertrude Barrows

Gertrude Mabel Barrows was born in Minneapolis in 1884 in the family of Charles and Caroline Barrows (née Hatch). Gertrude graduated from eight classes of the school, after which she attended evening cola in the hope of becoming an illustrator, but since 1901 she worked as a stenographer ^[1] .

In 1909, Gertrude Barrows married Stuart Bennett, a British correspondent. After the wedding, the newlyweds moved to Philadelphia, and nine months later the family had a daughter ^[2] . A year later, her husband died tragically in a tropical storm during an expedition to find sunken treasures ^{[2] [3]} . Gertrude was a secretary to a professor at the University of Pennsylvania. After the death of her father at the end of World War I, Bennett began to care for her disabled mother ^[2] .

At this time, her literary work began. Starting to write several short stories and novels, she finished some of them after the death of her mother in 1920 ^[4] . In the mid-1920s, she moved to California. Bennet lived separately from her daughter, because of this for some time it was believed that she died in 1939, when her daughter's last letter was written. However, later, thanks to the death certificate, it turned out that Gertrude Barrows Bennett died in 1948 ^[5] .

Bennett wrote her first science fiction story, The Curious Experience of Thomas Dunbar, at age 17. She sent him to the popular pulp magazine Argosy , which published the story in the March 1904 issue ^[2] .

When Bennett began to take care of her sick mother, she decided to return to writing to support her family ^[2] . The first work written after returning to literature was the novel “The Nightmare”, published in All-Story Weekly in 1917. The action takes place on an island divorced from the rest of the world, where evolution evolved in a different way. The Nightmare is reminiscent of Edgar Rice Burroughs ' , released a year later. Before publishing, Bennett asked the publisher to sign the work with the pseudonym Jean Vail, but the editor of the magazine decided to use a different pseudonym and published the story by Francis Stevens. After a positive reaction to the readers' story, Bennett decided to use the proposed pseudonym further ^[6] .

The next few years became fruitful for the writer, at this time many stories and novels were written. For example, the story “Friend Island” ( All-Story Weekly , 1918) tells of a matriarchal society of the XXII century, and in “Serapion” ( Argosy , 1920) tells of a man obsessed with a supernatural being. Many of Bennett’s short stories were compiled and published in The Nightmare and Other Tales of Dark Fantasy in 2004 under the same pseudonym Francis Stevens ^[7] .

In 1918, The Citadel of Fear was published in Argosy, the first novel by the writer. ^[8] The plot focuses on the forgotten Aztec city reopened during the First World War ^{[9] [10]} . It was only thanks to the preface to the novel in the 1952 reprint that it became clear to readers who was hiding Francis Stevens.

A year later, Bennett published her only science fiction novel, The Heads of Cerberus (The Thrill Book, 1919). A work in the dystopian genre with time travel and the image of totalitarian Philadelphia in 2118 ^[11] .

In 1920, Argosy released Claimed, one of Bennett’s most famous novels. At the center of the story is a supernatural artifact that evokes an ancient and powerful god in New Jersey at the beginning of the 20th century ^{[9] [12]} .

Bennett was called "the best contender for the creation of a new genre - dark fantasy " ^[13] . According to some reports, the work of Bennett influenced Howard Philips Lovecraft and Abraham Merritt ^{[6] [13]} . It is believed that Lovecraft praised Bennett's work, but this is a controversial statement, which was formed on the basis of letters mistakenly attributed to Lovecraft ^{[14] [15]} .

As for Merrit, critics for several decades believed that it was he who was hiding behind the pseudonym Francis Stevens. The truth was discovered only in 1952 after the reissue of The Citadel of Fear, with a biographical introduction by Arthur Lloyd Ashbach ^[16] .

Critic called Gertrude Barrows Bennett “the greatest science fiction science fiction writer between Mary Shelley and Catherine Moore ” ^[2] . Harry Hoppenstend, who wrote the preface to the 2004 Bennett collection, called her “the woman who invented dark fantasy ” ^{[2] [13]} .

Since Bennett was the first American woman widely published in the genres of fantasy and science fiction, she is considered to be the pioneer of female fantasy literature ^[12] .

Big form

• The Citadel of Fear (1918)
• The Labyrinth (1918)
• The Heads of Cerberus (1919)
• Avalon (1919)
• "Claimed" (1920)

Small form

• The Curious Experience of Thomas Dunbar (1904)
• The Nightmare (1917)
• Friend Island (1918)
• Behind the Curtain (1918)
• Unseen - Unfeared (1919)
• The Elf-Trap (1919)
• Serapion (1920)
• Sunfire (1923)

• Davin, Eric Leif. Partners in wonder: women and the birth of science fiction, 1926–1965 : [ eng. ] . - Lexington Books, 2006 .-- 456 p. - ISBN 073911266X .
• Eshbach, Lloyd Arthur. Introduction // Citadel of Fear. - Polaris Press, 1952.
• Joshi, ST; Schultz, David E. An HP Lovecraft Encyclopedia . - 2001. - 340 p. - ISBN 9780313016820 .
• Magill, Frank Northen. Survey of Modern Fantasy Literature. - Salem Press, 1983. - ISBN 0893564508 .
• Nicholls, Peter; Clute, John. The Encyclopedia of Science Fiction. - St. Martin's Press, 1993 .-- 1386 p. - ISBN 031213486X .
• Robin, Anne Reid. Women in Science Fiction and Fantasy : Volume 2: Entries: [ eng. ] . - Greenwood Press, 2009 .-- 408 p. - ISBN 978-0-313-33592-1 .
• Stevens, Francis; Hoppenstand, Gary. The Woman Who Invented Dark Fantasy // The Nightmare, and Other Tales of Dark Fantasy : [ eng. ] . - University of Nebraska Press, 2004 .-- 404 p. - ISBN 0803292988 .

• Francis Stevens at Fantasy Lab
• Francis Stevens at ISFDB
• Gertrude Barrows Bennett on the LibriVox website