John Stephens worked in the book trade in London and was editor of the Methodist journal, the Christian Advocate. He lost his job over attacks on conservative Wesleyans and went on to write emigration propaganda for George Fife Angas. His publications included The Land of Promise (republished in 1839 as The History of the Rise and Progress of the New British Province of South Australia). Stephens also edited Angas's South Australian Colonist and its successor, the South Australian News.
Stephens migrated to Adelaide with his second wife, arriving in the colony in January 1843. He began the
Adelaide Observer in July of that year and later bought 'the copyrights of the
South Australian Register ... together with the whole of the printing establishment connected with that journal, from its late proprietor,
Mr James Allen (q.v.)' (Paul Depasquale,
A Critical History of South Australian Literature 1836-1930 (1978): 17-18.). Stephens also published the
Royal South Australian Almanack and General Directory (1846) and
Voice from South Australia (1847), and began the
Adelaide Miscellany of Useful and Entertaining Knowledge in 1848.
Stephens was frequently subject to libel actions and his health suffered. The Australian Dictionary of Biography concludes its article on Stephens by saying: 'grieved by the lack of any love for literature in a population of 50,000 [Stephens] died in his brother Edward's fine home, Seacombe, at Brighton on 28 November 1850'.
Major source:
Australian Dictionary of Biography Online, http://adb.anu.edu.au/
Sighted: 22/01/2013
