Stephens, Kate (1853–1938)

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Stephens, Kate (1853–1938)

American feminist writer, editor and university professor. Born on February 27, 1853, in Moravia, New York; died on May 10, 1938, in Concordia, Kansas; daughter of Nelson Timothy Stephens (a lawyer) and Elizabeth (Rathbone) Stephens; University of Kansas, M.A. in Greek, 1878; engaged to Byron CaldwellSmith (a professor), 1874 (died 1877); never married; no children.

Wrote polemical works, including A Curious History in Book Editing (1927) and Lies and Libels of Frank Harris (1929); wrote several books on Kansas, including American Thumb-Prints: Mettle of Our Men and Women (1905); wrote epistolary fiction in A Woman's Heart (1906), republished as Pillar of Smoke, and feminist essays in Workfellows in Social Progression (1916); her love letters from Byron Caldwell Smith were published as The Professor's Love-Life: Letters of Ronsby Maldclewith (1919), and republished (1930) as The Love-Life of Byron Caldwell Smith.

Kate Stephens was born in 1853 in Moravia, New York, the third of five children born to lawyer (later Judge) Nelson Timothy Stephens and Elizabeth Rathbone Stephens . Encouraged in her reading and thinking by her father, Stephens entered the junior preparatory class of the University of Kansas at age 15. In 1875, she graduated from the regular college course as valedictorian and three years later received an M.A. in Greek.

In 1874, Stephens became engaged to the controversial young academic Byron Caldwell Smith. Stripped of his professorship because of his liberal religious views, Smith suffered from poor health and died in Colorado in 1877, aged only 27. Stephens published his love letters to her as The Professor's Love-Life: Letters of Ronsby Maldclewith in 1919; they were republished as The Love-Life of Byron Caldwell Smith in 1930.

Kate Stephens had a similarly rocky academic career teaching Greek language and literature at the University of Kansas. Despite the popularity of her classes, her pantheistic views and strong personality made her unpopular with other faculty members, and she was dismissed as professor in 1885. A year earlier, her father had died. Her mother became an invalid, and she herself suffered from nervous exhaustion and poor health. Her dismissal from the university, however, inspired Stephens to a life of active and outspoken feminism.

Kate and Elizabeth moved to Cambridge, Massachusetts, and in 1890, for financial reasons, Stephens became a junior editor at D.C. Heath and Company. There she had a spirited quarrel with the publishers and senior editor Charles Eliot Norton when he tried to claim sole credit for her series of children's readers, an episode she was to publicize in 1927 in her book A Curious History in Book Editing. She continued working in an editorial capacity for a variety of publishers after moving to New York City in 1894. Stephens became a member of the Pen and Brush club and an active committee member, receiving a War and Navy citation for her work at the New York War Camp Community Service during World War I.

In addition to articles, reviews and numerous letters to newspapers, Stephens wrote books on a variety of topics, including Kansas history, feminist issues and the nature of American democracy. Her attention-grabbing polemical writings, for which she is best known, were inspired by causes close to her heart. Truths Back of the Jimmy Myth in a State University in the Middle West (1924) argued her father's claim to founding the University of Kansas law school over that of her brother-in-law, Dr. James Green. In 1929, Stephens published Lies and Libels of Frank Harris (edited by Gerrit and Mary Caldwell Smith ), a well-researched rebuttal of Irish-American Harris' portrait of Lawrence, Kansas, Byron Caldwell Smith, and Stephens herself in his notorious 1922 autobiography My Life and Loves.

After an adult life plagued by illness, Stephens returned to Lawrence in 1935, aged 82, where she spent her final years in better health. In 1938, she suffered a cerebral hemorrhage and died two months later at her niece's home in Concordia, Kansas. Stephens, who was buried in the family plot at Oak Hill Cemetery in Lawrence, left her entire estate of $30,000 to the University of Kansas, founding the Judge Stephens Lectureship of the School of Law.