The Elf-Trap by Francis Stevens - Written by the Woman Who Invented Dark Fantasy

Silently it waited in a woodland glen, baited with dreams to tempt… the strange lost company that time had forgot. The Elf-Trap by Francis Stevens. That’s next on The Lost Sci-Fi Podcast.

There’s a good chance you’ve never heard of Francis Stevens. But after today’s story you will probably never forget her. She has been called “the woman who invented dark fantasy.”

She was born Gertrude Mabel Barrows in Minneapolis Minnesota in 1883. Some say her middle name was Myrtle instead of Mabel but since the state of Minnesota and the county where she was born don’t have birth records going back that far we will never know.

She wrote her first short story at age 17, a science fiction story titled The Curious Experience of Thomas Dunbar. She mailed the story to Argosy. The story was accepted and published in the March 1904 issue, listing the author as "G. M. Barrows”. Although the initials disguised her gender, this appears to be the first instance of an American female author publishing science fiction, and using her real name.

She had only seven short stories published and wrote five novels, with just two released during her lifetime. From Argosy magazine in July 1919, The Elf-Trap by Francis Stevens…

Next on The Lost Sci-Fi Podcast, The punishment had to fit more than just the crime—it had to suit every world in the Galaxy! The Eel by Miriam Allen DeFord.

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