Laura Jean Libbey

Libbey lived most of her life in Brooklyn, New York.[1] Her parents were Thomas and Elizabeth Libbey.[2] She began writing around age 20.[1] Over the course of her career, she completed 82 novels.[1]

Some of Libbey's stories first appeared as serialized stories in papers such as The New York Family Story Paper, The Fireside Companion, and the New York Ledger.[1] During the 1880s her stories were popular enough for Libbey to negotiate high paying exclusive contracts with specific papers.[3] These serialized stories were later reprinted in dime novel format by publishers of cheap fiction such as George Munro, Arthur Westbrook, and John Lovell.[1]

Over fifteen million copies of her books were published.[3] According to The American Bookseller, Libbey's 1889 The Pretty Young Girl was "the hit of the season" in selling 60,000 copies in thirty days.[4] At one point, Libbey reported she was earning $60,000 a year, but this number may have been exaggerated.[1][3]

Three of Libbey's stories were made into films: When Love Grows Cold (1926), A Poor Girl's Romance (1927), and In a Moment of Temptation (1928).[5][6][7][8] Libbey also wrote 120 plays, many based on her previously published stories.[3]

Known as the "working-girl" novelist,[9] Libbey's stories were romances about employed young women without family support.[1] Her earliest stories (published in the 1880s) were moralistic and focused on the difficulties of factory work. [3] The stories published in the 1890s and 1900s focused more on the process of finding an appropriate romantic partner.[3]

According to Joyce Shaw Peterson, Libbey's heroines show signs of being proto-feminists.[10] They work for a living, they are spirited, they are proud, they have integrity.[10] When abducted they often manage to run away on their own.[10] However, their permanent safety always depends upon male protection.[10] There is no female solidarity in Libbey's stories, other women are jealous rivals for the attentions of men.[10] Employment is an opportunity to find a wonderful husband, not a chance to find freedom and self-definition.[10] Overall, Libbey's stories were outside the feminist stream of the time which focused on economic independence.[10]

Libbey also worked as an editor.[1] From 1891 to 1894 she edited George Munro’s Fashion Bazaar.[1] Her financial records indicate that she received $10,400 a year for her editorial work.[1]

Supposedly Libbey's mother forbade her from marrying.[1] Two years after Libbey's mother passed away in 1896 she married a Brooklyn lawyer by the name of Van Mater Stilwell.[1] Libbey was 36 years old when she married.[1]

Libbey died in 1924 after complications from cancer surgery.[1] She is buried in Green-Wood Cemetery in Brooklyn.[8] Libbey's papers are held by Rutgers University.[11]

Wikimedia Commons has media related to Laura Jean Libbey.

• Works by Laura Jean Libbey at Project Gutenberg
• Mischievous Maid Faynie by Laura Jean Libbey at Project Gutenberg
• Works by or about Laura Jean Libbey at Internet Archive
• American Women's Dime Novel Project biography