Harold Stephen was the eldest son of George Milner Stephen, a lawyer, colonial administrator, land speculator, faith healer and relative of Sir Leslie Stephen, the distinguished Victorian man of letters and his brother, Sir James Fitzjames Stephen, an outstanding English lawyer. His mother was Mary Hindmarsh, daughter of Sir John Hindmarsh, Governor of South Australia. Stephen was a journalist, educated in Melbourne and Germany. He was editor of the short-lived journals The Athenaeum and The Critic (1873), and for a short time was the editor of the Sydney Punch. Stephen also contributed to annuals and miscellanies, and published several novels. He wrote a pamphlet about mediums, Vagabonds and their Dupes : Being a Complete Exposure of Some Errors and Misstatements of 'The Vagabond' and Certain of His Friends (1879) to which Julian Thomas replied with Mediums and Their Dupes (1879). Stephen edited the Handbook and History of the Australasian Steam Navigation Co. by Captain F. H. Trouton (1884). From 1885-1889 he was a member of the New South Wales Parliament.
(Source: E. Morris Miller Australian Literature from its Beginnings to 1935 (1940): 620)
