- Source: Augusta de Grasse Stevens
Augusta de Grasse Stevens (1852 – 10 October 1894) was an American novelist and art critic.
Augusta de Grasse Stevens was born in 1852 in Albany, New York, the daughter of Samuel S. Stevens, a patent attorney, and Mary Frances Smith. Following the death of her father and her stepfather, John F. Butterworth, she and her mother moved to London, where her sister Marie lived with her husband, Sir Francis Evans, 1st Baronet.
Stevens reported on the London art scene for the New York Times for ten years. In this role, she was resented by novelist Harold Frederic, who later satirized her as Miss Timby-Hucks in Mrs. Albert Grundy: Observations in Philistia (1896).
Her first novel, Old Boston, was a historical romance about the American Revolutionary War. Her book The Lost Dauphin was about Eleazer Williams' claim to be the "lost dauphin", Louis XVII. In her novel Miss Hildreth, a character accuses Helena Blavatsky of being a Russian spy, an accusation the real Blavatsky denied.
Augusta de Grasse Stevens died on 10 October 1894 in Brussels.
Bibliography
Old Boston: A Romance of the War of Independence. 3 vol. London: Sampson Low, 1884.
The Lost Dauphin: Louis XVIII or Onwarenhiiaki the Indian Iroquois Chief, 1887.
Miss Hildreth: A Novel. 3 vol. London: Ward and Downey, 1888.