author
Harriet Lewis
1841–1878
A prolific writer of sensation and romance fiction, she helped feed the huge appetite for serialized stories in nineteenth-century American weeklies. Her novels promised intrigue, mistaken identities, and emotional drama for a mass audience.
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, in 1841, she became known to readers as Mrs. Harriet Lewis. She wrote popular serial fiction during the great age of story papers and dime novels, contributing to publications linked with the New York Weekly and the New York Ledger.
Her work was part of the fast-moving, high-drama fiction that flourished in the late nineteenth century: romances, secrets, reversals of fortune, and cliffhangers that kept readers coming back each week. Records of her books and serials show a substantial output, and some sources indicate that she also collaborated at times with her husband, writer Leon Lewis.
She died in 1878, still relatively young, but her stories continued to circulate in later editions and reprints. That long afterlife suggests how strongly her fiction connected with everyday readers of popular American literature.