Stella Eugenie Asling-Riis (October 4, 1869 – 1957) was a Canadian writer and a

clubwoman The club movement is an American women's social movement that started in the mid-19th century and spread throughout the United States. It established the idea that women had a moral duty and responsibility to transform public policy. While wome ...

in New York City.

Early life

Histella Eugenia Asling was born at

Simcoe, Ontario Simcoe is an unincorporated community and former town in Southwestern Ontario, Canada near Lake Erie. It is the county seat and largest community of Norfolk County. Simcoe is at the junction of Highway 3, at Highway 24, due south of Brantford ...

, the daughter of Charles Wesley Asling and Mary Isabella Morrow Asling. She attended

Parkdale Collegiate Institute Founded in 1888, Parkdale Collegiate Institute is a public high school located on Jameson Avenue in Parkdale, Toronto, Ontario, Canada. It is located in the heart of what is considered ' Little Tibet', which is the home of the largest concentrat ...

in Toronto."Personalities in Clubdom: Mrs. Andrew J. Riis"
''Brooklyn Daily Eagle'' (February 26, 1933): 22. via

Newspapers.com Ancestry.com LLC is an American genealogy company based in Lehi, Utah. The largest for-profit genealogy company in the world, it operates a network of genealogical, historical records, and related genetic genealogy websites. It is owned by The ...

Career

An early example of short fiction by Stella Asling, "To History Unknown," appeared in ''The Canadian Magazine'' in 1893. Asling-Riis wrote a serialized epistolary tale, "The Adventures of Elisa" (1912), for ''The American Scandinavian Magazine''. Historical novels by Stella Asling-Riis included ''Crowned at Elim'' (1903), ''The Great Fresh Sea'' (1931) and ''Star Over Flushing'' (1939). She also wrote non-fiction articles for magazines. Asling-Riis was also a regular writer of letters to the editor of ''The New York Times'' in the 1920s, on topics as varied as King Tut's Tomb,

Americanization Americanization or Americanisation (see spelling differences) is the influence of the American culture and economy on other countries outside the United States, including their media, cuisine, business practices, popular culture, technology ...

, and the Norse in early North America. She organized a chapter of Daughters of the British Empire, and was active in the Writers Club of Brooklyn, the Twentieth Century Club, and the

Women's Christian Temperance Union The Woman's Christian Temperance Union (WCTU) is an international temperance organization. It was among the first organizations of women devoted to social reform with a program that "linked the religious and the secular through concerted and far ...

. She attended national and state temperance meetings even after the end of Prohibition. Asling-Riis gave talks to women's groups about the

Huron people The Wyandot people (also Wyandotte, Wendat, Waⁿdát, or Huron) are an Indigenous people of the Northeastern Woodlands of the present-day United States and Canada. Their Wyandot language belongs to the Iroquoian language family. In Canada, ...

of Canada, wearing costumes to evoke their culture; she told of being adopted into the tribe and receiving a tribal name.

Personal life

Stella Asling married Andreas Jensen "Andrew" Riis (1869-1936), a Danish-born builder and widower with two young sons, in 1906. They lived in

Richmond Hill, New York Richmond Hill is a commercial and residential neighborhood located in the southeastern section of the New York City borough of Queens. The area borders Kew Gardens and Forest Park to the north, Jamaica and South Jamaica to the east, South Ozone ...

and were active in the American Scandinavian Foundation. Stella was also a member of the Danish American Women's Association. She was widowed when Andrew Riis died by suicide in 1936; she moved back to Ontario, where she died in 1957.''Canada's Early Women Writers''
SFU Digitized Collections, Simon Fraser University.

References

{{DEFAULTSORT:Asling-Riis, Stella 1869 births 1957 deaths Canadian women novelists People from Norfolk County, Ontario Writers from Queens, New York People from Richmond Hill, Queens Clubwomen 20th-century Canadian novelists 20th-century Canadian women writers Canadian emigrants to the United States