Alice Barber Stephens

Alice Barber Stephens (born July 1, 1858, near Salem, New Jersey, U.S.—died July 13, 1932, Rose Valley, Pennsylvania) was an American illustrator whose work appeared regularly in the most popular books and magazines of her day.

Alice Barber grew up in New Jersey and in Philadelphia. She began drawing at an early age, and in 1870, while still attending public school, she began taking classes at the School of Design for Women in Philadelphia. At age 15 she began supporting herself by selling wood engravings to Scribner’s Monthly, Harper’s Weekly, Harper’s Young People, the local Woman’s Words, and other periodicals.

In 1876 Barber began taking classes conducted by the painter Thomas Eakins at the Pennsylvania Academy of the Fine Arts in Philadelphia. Within a short time she had abandoned engraving for illustration, and her works in charcoal, oil, watercolour, and other media became regular features in magazines such as Century, Cosmopolitan, and Harper’s Weekly. In 1886–87 she studied in Paris and visited Italy. On her return to the United States she became a regular contributor to the Ladies’ Home Journal. She received numerous commissions to illustrate books, including those of Louisa May Alcott, Margaret Deland, Bret Harte, and Arthur Conan Doyle, and special editions of Henry Wadsworth Longfellow’s The Courtship of Miles Standish (1858) and Nathaniel Hawthorne’s The Marble Faun (1860).

Barber married Charles H. Stephens, an instructor at the Pennsylvania Academy, in 1890 and in later years taught at the School of Design for Women. Her later works were generally in charcoal and wash. She ceased working in 1926, and in 1929 the Plastic Club of Philadelphia, which she had helped found, mounted a retrospective of her work.