Helen Stuart Campbell (pen names, Helen Weeks, Helen Campbell, Helen Wheaton;^{[lower-alpha 1]} July 5, 1839 – July 22, 1918)^[3] was an American author, economist, and editor, as well as a social and industrial reformer. She was a pioneer in the field of home economics.^[4] Her Household Economics (1897) was an early textbook in the field of domestic science.^[5]

Her first literary work was a series of stories for children, which appeared between 1864 and 1870 in Our Young Folks and The Riverside Magazine, and in book form as the Ainslee Series; then, in rapid succession, she published: His Grandmothers (1877); Six Sinners (1878); Unto the Third and Fourth Generation (1880); Four, and What They Did (1880); The Easiest Way in Housekeeping and Cooking; Adapted to Domestic Use or Study in Classes (1881); Patty Pearson's Boy: A Tale of Two Generations (1881); The Problem of the Poor: A Record of Quiet Work in Unquiet Places (1882); Under Green Apple Boughs (1882); The American Girl's Home-Book of Work and Play (1883); The Housekeeper's Year-Book (1888); Mrs. Herndon's Income (1883); The What-to-Do Club: A Story for Girls (1885); Miss Melinda's Opportunity (1886); Prisoners of Poverty: Women Wage-workers, their Trades and their Lives (1887 and 1893); Roger Berkeley's Probation (1888); Prisoners of Poverty Abroad (1888); Darkness and Daylight (1891); In Foreign Kitchens (1894); Some Passages in the Practice of Dr. Martha Scarborough (1895); and Household Economics (1897).^[4] At the turn of the century, she published, Ballantyne: a Novel (1901).^[6]

Helen Campbell Stuart was born in Lockport, New York to Jane E. (née Campbell) and Homer H. Stuart (died 1890).^[7] Both parents were Vermonters,^[2] of Scotch ancestry. The Stuart family, after settling in the United States, was prominent in early colonial affairs, three generations fighting and dying in Indian, French and revolutionary wars. Homer removed, in 1839, to New York City, where he practiced law for over 50 years, being also for some years president of the Continental Bank Note Company, of New York.^[4]

She was educated in a school at Warren, Rhode Island, and at Mrs. Cook's seminary, Bloomington, New Jersey (1850–58).^[8][4]

From the first, Campbell's writings were of a philanthropic and domestic character. She becoming an earnest student of economic and social problems, especially in connection with the conditions of laboring women. She wrote several important studies about women trapped in poverty, and the role that effective home economics could play in lifting women and families out of poverty. Her writings had a recognized position among economic works. They demonstrated a thorough study of her subjects, and were thoughtful and sympathetic, though generally more of a popular than a scientific or thoroughly exhaustive character.^[4] Campbell contributed many articles on economic subjects to reviews and magazines. She wrote novels and nonfiction works dealing with home economics and relationships between the individual, the home, the workplace, physical well-being, and childhood. She was active in many organizations that advocated female empowerment and associated with many intellectuals and original thinkers, including writer Charlotte Perkins Gilman. Much of her writing was engaging and vigorous. Her pieces exposed Gilded Age social inequities and public health failures.

The "Critic" said, in 1887, of Campbell's Prisoners of Poverty: "Her book is devoted chiefly to statement and fact; not to the suggestion of remedies. She reinforces our consciousness that the final remedy lies farther back than in mere increase of wages or division of profits." In 1897, "The Bookman" of New York, said of Household Economics: "It is fascinating in style, teems with epigrams, and abounds in truths which it behooves women to consider. The spirit of the lectures is one of delightful idealism."^[4]

She married Dr. Grenville Mellen Weeks (born 1837), physician and soldier, in 1859 or 1860. In 1871, the marriage floundered, and eventually they divorced.^[2] He remarried twice thereafter.^[13]

Campbell was a member of the Sorosis Club of New York, the American Economic Association, the Consumers' League and the Pacific Coast Women's Press Association.^[4] For a major part of her life, she made her home was in New York City. In her later days, she became a devotee of the Baháʼí Faith, spending time at one of its institutions, Green Acre, in Eliot, Maine.^[14] By 1915, she was in Boston,^[15] and she spent her later days in Dedham, Massachusetts,^[9] where she died of endocarditis and nephritis in 1918. Her remains were taken to Eliot.^[2]

• The Ainslee stories
• Ballantyne - a novel
• The easiest way in housekeeping and cooking
• Good dinners for every day in the year
• Grandpa's house
• Household economics; a course of lectures in the School of economics of the University of Wisconsin
• The housekeeper's year-book
• In foreign kitchens - with choice recipes from England, France, Germany, Italy, and the North
• Prisoners of poverty abroad
• Six sinners; or, School days in Bantam Valley
• Women wage-earners- their past, their present and their future