Bess Streeter Aldrich (pen name, Margaret Dean Stephens; February 17, 1881 – August 3, 1954) was an American author.

[3] In 1907, she married Charles Sweetzer Aldrich, who had graduated with a law degree from Iowa State University and had been one of the youngest captains in the Spanish–American War.

[4] Aldrich began writing more regularly in 1911 when the Ladies' Home Journal advertised a fiction contest, which she entered and won $175 for her story "The Little House Next Door".

The latter novel was made into the movie Cheers for Miss Bishop in 1941, which starred Martha Scott and Edmund Gwenn and premiered in Lincoln, Nebraska.

In 1946, Aldrich moved to Lincoln, Nebraska, to be closer to her daughter and her writing slowed to just one story per year as age began to take its toll.