Stephens, Ann S: The Old Homestead. v1. 18 Nov 2013
 

Ann Sophia Stephens (1810–1886) was an American novelist and magazine editor. She was the author of dime novels and is credited as the progenitor of that genre. Ann Sophia Stephens was born on March 30, 1810 in Derby, Connecticut, She was the daughter of Ann and John Winterbotham, brother of William Winterbotham. He was the manager of a woolen mill owned by Col. David Humphreys. Her mother died early and she was brought up by her mother's sister, who eventually became her stepmother. She was educated at a dame school in South Britain, Connecticut and started writing at an early age. She married Edward Stephens, a printer from Plymouth, Massachusetts, in 1831 and they relocated to Portland, Maine. The actress Clara Bloodgood was the daughter of their son, Edward Stephens, a well known New York lawyer.

Excerpt
"I wonder, oh, I wonder if he will come?"
The voice which uttered these words was so anxious, so pathetic with deep feeling, that you would have loved the poor child, whose heart gave them forth, plain and miserable as she was. Yet a more helpless creature, or a more desolate home could not well be imagined. She was very small, even for her age. Her little sharp features had no freshness in them; her lips were thin; her eyes not only heavy, but full of dull anguish, which gave you an idea of settled pain, both of soul and body, for no mere physical suffering ever gave that depth of expression to the eyes of a child.