author
M. L. Campbell
Best known for a witty 1893 tale about a mechanical housemaid, this little-known writer imagined domestic automation long before robots became a familiar science-fiction idea.
1 Audiobook
The Automatic Maid-of-All-Work: A Possible Tale of the Near Future
by M. L. Campbell
About the author
M. L. Campbell is a little-documented author associated with The Automatic Maid-of-All-Work: A Possible Tale of the Near Future, a humorous speculative story first published in 1893 and now available through Project Gutenberg.
That story has kept Campbell's name in circulation because of its strikingly early take on automation in everyday life. Modern readers often notice how the piece mixes comedy with a forward-looking idea: a machine built to handle household labor, and the trouble that follows.
Very little reliable biographical information appears to be readily available online, so it is safest to remember Campbell chiefly through this surviving work and its place in early science fiction.