author
Harriet Lewis
1841–1878
A busy and popular dime novelist of the 1860s and 1870s, she wrote fast-moving sensation fiction for mass readers at a time when story papers were booming. Her life was short, but her name remained attached to a long list of serialized tales and novels.
2 Audiobooks
Neva's three lovers: a novel
by Harriet Lewis
Neva's choice A sequel to "Neva's three lovers"
by Harriet Lewis
About the author
Born Harriet Newell O'Brien in Penn Yan, New York, she wrote under the name Mrs. Harriet Lewis and became a familiar byline in American popular fiction. Records gathered by library and reference sources place her life from 1841 to 1878, and connect her with a large body of serialized novels and story-paper fiction.
She worked in the world of dime novels and weekly literary papers, where suspense, romance, hidden identities, and sudden reversals were part of the appeal. Sources on her husband, writer Leon Lewis, indicate that the two wrote both separately and in collaboration for widely read publications including the New York Weekly and the New York Ledger.
Much about her private life remains hazy, which is often the case for prolific popular writers of her era. Even so, the surviving publication records show an author who wrote energetically for a huge reading audience and helped shape the lively, melodramatic fiction that entertained nineteenth-century America.