Helen Stuart Campbell

About 1859 or 1860, she married an army surgeon, Dr. Grenville Mellen Weeks.[4] She thereafter lived in various portions of the U.S., during which time she gained that broad experience which has reappeared in her literary work. Endowed with abundant vitality, great imagination, power of dramatic expression and a profoundly sympathetic nature, it was impossible for the young woman to live an idle life.[7]

At the age of 23, under her married name, Helen C. Weeks, she began work for children, writing steadily for Our Young Folks, the Riverside Magazine and other juvenile periodicals. Like all her subsequent work, these articles were vital, magnetic and infused with humor and pathos. Soon her stories grew in length, and the Ainslee Series was issued in book form. This comprised "Ainslee," "Grandpa's House," "Four and What They Did" and " White and Red." They were popular, and all of them were reprinted in England. Her next works were Six Sinners, His Grandmothers and The American Girl's Hand-book of Work and Play.[7]

In 1878, Campbell was a teacher in North Carolina at the Raleigh Cooking School.[9] About 1882, she became literary and household editor of Our Continent, and wrote for its pages the popular novel entitled Under Green Apple Boughs, followed by the What-to-do-Club. These latter books were preceded by several others, entitled Unto the Third and Fourth Generation, and The Easiest Way in Housekeeping and Cooking.[7]

Helen Campbell

Problem of the Poor, which gave an impetus to much work along the same lines by other writers, began Campbell's special interest in the poor. This appeared in 1880 and drew great attention toward plans for alleviating the miseries of the ignorant and impoverished in New York City. Some of the conclusions reached by Campbell appeared in her novel, Mrs. Herndon's Income, which was printed first as a serial in the Christian Union, and was afterward issued in book form. This powerful book at once lifted Campbell to an important place as a novelist, while her thrilling story won the attention of philanthropists and reformers the world over.

From 1881 until 1884, Campbell was literary editor of the Continent, published in Philadelphia, and in 1889, she assumed charge of a department in the Springfield, Massachusetts, Good Housekeeping, entitled "Woman's Work and Wages." This led to a productive line of inquiry into women working outside of the home. In 1891, Campbell received a prize from the American Economic Association for a monograph upon "Women Wage-Earners."[7] Women Wage-Earners was later expanded for publication in 1893 and came to be known as "the first major statistical monograph on the situation of American women working for wages".[10]

In 1886, attracted by Mrs. Herndon's Income, the New York Tribune appointed her its commissioner to investigate the condition of women wage-earners in New York, and that work resulted in a series of papers under the title of "Prisoners of Poverty," which caused a profound and widespread sensation respecting the life of wage-women in the metropolis. It may be regarded as the seed from which followed a vast amount of literature upon the topic, resulting in great amelioration in the condition of a large body of workers.[7]

In 1894, she was appointed professor of household economics in the school of sociology at the University of Wisconsin, and this chair she continued to fill until 1897, when she accepted a call to the State Agricultural College of Kansas.[4] Her 1897 work, Household Economics was compiled from a course of lectures which she delivered at the university.[4]

Soon afterwards, Campbell went abroad to investigate the lives of wage-earners in London, Paris, Italy and Germany. There, she remained 18 months or more, the fruits of her work appearing, upon her return to the United States, in Prisoners of Poverty Abroad. Following that she published: Miss Melinda's Opportunity and Roger Berkley's Probation, two short novels; Anne Bradstreet and Her Time, a biography of the 17th century colonial American poet Anne Bradstreet.;[11] and, A Sylvan City, a historical study of life in Philadelphia. A later published work of Campbell's, Darkness and Daylight in New York, was a series of graphic portraitures of the salient features of the city.

She also worked as a professor of economics at the University of Wisconsin (1893–96), professor of domestic science at Kansas State Agricultural College (1896–97),[12] and was the head resident in Chicago's Unity Settlement.[9]

• This article incorporates text from this source, which is in the public domain: Leonard, John William; Marquis, Albert Nelson (1910). Who's who in America. Marquis Who's Who.
• This article incorporates text from this source, which is in the public domain: Marquis, Albert Nelson (1915). Who's who in New England: A Biographical Dictionary of Leading Living Men and Women of the States of Maine, New Hampshire, Vermont, Massachusetts, Rhode Island and Connecticut (Public domain ed.). A.N. Marquis & Company. p. 204.
• This article incorporates text from this source, which is in the public domain: Rines, George Edwin; Beach, Frederick Converse (1905). The Encyclopedia Americana: A universal reference library comprising the arts and sciences ... commerce, etc., of the world. Vol. 3 (Public domain ed.). Scientific American Compiling Dpt.
• This article incorporates text from this source, which is in the public domain: White, J. T. (1899). The National cyclopedia of American biography, being the history of the United States as illustrated in the lives of the founders, builders, and defenders of the republic, and of the men and women who are doing the work and moulding the thought of the present time (Public domain ed.). J. T. White.
• This article incorporates text from this source, which is in the public domain: Willard, Frances Elizabeth; Livermore, Mary Ashton Rice (1893). A Woman of the Century: Fourteen Hundred-seventy Biographical Sketches Accompanied by Portraits of Leading American Women in All Walks of Life (Public domain ed.). Moulton. p. 147.
• This article incorporates text from this source, which is in the public domain: Wilson, James Grant; Fiske, John (1888). Appleton's Cyclopædia of American Biography. Vol. 1 (Public domain ed.). D. Appleton.

• Katzman, David M. (1981). Seven Days a Week: Women and Domestic Service in Industrializing America. University of Illinois Press. p. 363. ISBN 978-0-252-00882-5.
• Ludington, Townsend (1998). Marsden Hartley: The Biography of an American Artist. Cornell University Press. p. 51. ISBN 0-8014-8580-0.
• Radcliffe College (1971). Notable American Women, 1607–1950: A Biographical Dictionary. Harvard University Press. p. 281. ISBN 978-0-674-62734-5.
• Room, Adrian (20 September 2012). Dictionary of Pseudonyms: 13,000 Assumed Names and Their Origins, 5th ed. McFarland. ISBN 978-0-7864-5763-2.