Helen Ashe Hays

Helen Ashe Hays was an American author whose known books include The Princess Idleways: A Fairy Story and The Adventures of Prince Lazybones, and Other Stories. Her work is associated with children's fantasy and fairy-tale storytelling, and The Princess Idleways was published in the late 1870s.

Later in life she was known as Helen Nutting after marrying the artist Myron Nutting. Archival records at Northwestern University note that the couple lived in Paris in the 1920s, where she became friendly with members of James Joyce's circle, including Ezra Pound, T. S. Eliot, and Sylvia Beach.

Those same archival records describe her poetry and journals, which preserve reminiscences of that remarkable literary scene. That mix of fairy-tale imagination and firsthand connection to major 20th-century writers makes her an especially intriguing figure for curious readers.