Alice Ilgenfritz Jones

Born in Ohio on January 9, 1846, and raised mostly in Cedar Rapids, Iowa, she wrote travel essays for Lippincott's Monthly Magazine as well as several novels. Her first novel, High-Water Mark (1879), appeared under the pen name "Ferris Jerome."

She is best remembered as the coauthor, with Ella Robinson Merchant, of Unveiling a Parallel (1893), first published under the shared name "Two Women of the West." The novel is now noted as an early feminist and utopian science-fiction work, using an imagined society to explore marriage, gender expectations, and social equality.

She also wrote historical and regional fiction, including Beatrice of Bayou Têche and The Chevalier de St. Denis. Sources located in this conversation give her death date as March 5, 1906, so although some listings shorten her dates to 1846–1905, the fuller record found here points to 1846–1906.