Ann Sophia Stephens was born on March 30, 1810, in Derby, Connecticut, she was the daughter of Ann and John Winterbotham, son 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.

While in Portland, she and her husband co-founded, published and edited the Portland Magazine, a monthly literary periodical where some of her early work first appeared. The magazine was sold in 1837. They moved to New York where Ann took the job of editor to The Ladies Companion and where she could further her literary work. This was also the time she adopted the humorous pseudonym Jonathan Slick. Over the next few years she wrote over twenty-five serial novels plus short stories and poems for several well known periodicals which included Godey’s Lady’s Book and Graham’s Magazine. Her first novel Fashion and famine was published in 1854. She started her own magazine Mrs Stephens’ Illustrated New Monthly in 1856, it was published by her husband. The magazine merged with Peterson’s Magazine a few years later.