| Edward Irenaeus Prime-Stevenson | |
| Pseudonym: | Xavier Mayne |
| Birth Date: | January 29, 1858 |
| Birth Place: | Madison, New Jersey |
| Death Date: | July 23, 1942 (aged 84) |
| Death Place: | Lausanne, Switzerland |
| Occupation: | Novelist, journalist |
| Nationality: | American |
Edward Irenaeus Prime-Stevenson (January 29, 1858 – July 23, 1942) was an American writer. He used the pseudonym Xavier Mayne.[1]
Prime-Stevenson (also known as Edward Stevenson, Edward Prime Stevenson, and E. Irenaeus Prime Stevenson) was born in 1858 in Madison, New Jersey, [1] the youngest of five children born to Paul E. Stevenson and Cornelia Prime. His father was a Presbyterian minister and a school principal; his mother came from a distinguished literary and academic figures.[1]
After studying law, Stevenson decided to become a writer and a journalist.[1] During the 1880s, he began a career as a critic in New York City for Harper's Weekly, a political magazine, and as book reviewer and music critic for the weekly Independent. In 1896, Stevenson published The Square of Sevens, and the Parallelogram: An Authoritative Method of Cartomancy with a Prefatory Note by Robert Antrobus that was supposedly written in 1735. However, it is believed that Prime-Stevenson was the author. In 1906, under the pseudonym Xavier Mayne, Stevenson published the homosexually themed novel , and in 1908 a sexology study, The Intersexes,[1] a defense of homosexuality from a scientific, legal, historical, and personal perspective.
In 1901, he moved to Europe, living in Florence and Lausanne. He died in Lausanne of a heart attack in 1942, aged 84.