Edward Irenaeus Prime-Stevenson

• Name — Edward Irenaeus Prime-Stevenson • Pen Name — Xavier Mayne • Born — 29 January 1858 • Birthplace — Madison, New Jersey • Died — July 23, 1942 (aged 84) • Place of death — Lausanne, Switzerland • Occupation — Novelist, journalist

Prime-Stevenson (also known as Edward Stevenson, Edward Prime Stevenson, and E. Irenaeus Prime Stevenson) was born in 1858 in Madison, New Jersey, 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. After studying law, Stevenson decided to become a writer and a journalist. 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 Imre: A Memorandum, and in 1908 a sexology study, The Intersexes, 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.

He also worked under the name Xavier Mayne. The authorities additionally record the headings Xavier Mayne, Edward Irenæus Prime-Stevenson and Edward Irenaeus Prime Stevenson. His recorded language was English. He was the child of Cornelia Prime Stevenson.