Children's writer About 1859 or 1860, she married an army surgeon, Dr. Grenville Mellen Weeks. She thereafter lived in various portions of the U.S., during which time she gained experience which has reappeared in her literary work. At the age of 23, under her married name, Helen C. Weeks, she began work for children, writing steadily for
Our Young Folks, the
Riverside Magazine and other juvenile periodicals. Like all her subsequent work, these articles were vital, magnetic and infused with humor and pathos. Soon her stories grew in length, and the
Ainslee Series was issued in book form. This comprised "Ainslee," "Grandpa's House," "Four and What They Did" and " White and Red." They were popular, and all of them were reprinted in England. Her next works were
Six Sinners,
His Grandmothers and ''The American Girl's Hand-book of Work and Play''.
Social and industrial reformer In 1878, Campbell was a teacher in
North Carolina at the
Raleigh Cooking School. In 1886, attracted by ''Mrs. Herndon's Income
, the New York Tribune'' appointed her its commissioner to investigate the condition of women wage-earners in New York, and that work resulted in a series of papers under the title of "Prisoners of Poverty," which caused a profound and widespread sensation respecting the life of wage-women in the metropolis. It may be regarded as the seed from which followed a vast amount of literature upon the topic, resulting in great amelioration in the condition of a large body of workers. In 1894, she was appointed professor of household economics in the school of sociology at the
University of Wisconsin, and this chair she continued to fill until 1897, when she accepted a call to the
State Agricultural College of Kansas. Her 1897 work,
Household Economics was compiled from a course of lectures which she delivered at the university. Soon afterwards, Campbell went abroad to investigate the lives of wage-earners in
London,
Paris, Italy and Germany. There, she remained 18 months or more, the fruits of her work appearing, upon her return to the United States, in
Prisoners of Poverty Abroad. Following that she published: ''Miss Melinda's Opportunity
and Roger Berkley's Probation
, two short novels; Anne Bradstreet and Her Time
, a biography of the 17th century colonial American poet Anne Bradstreet.; and, A Sylvan City'', a historical study of life in Philadelphia. A later published work of Campbell's,
Darkness and Daylight in New York, was a series of graphic
portraitures of the salient features of the city. She also worked as a professor of economics at the University of Wisconsin (1893–96), professor of domestic science at Kansas State Agricultural College (1896–97), and was the head resident in
Chicago's Unity Settlement. ==Influence and reception==