Edna Kenton
{{Short description|American writer and literary critic}}
{{Infobox person
| name = Edna Kenton
| image = Photo of Edna Kenton.jpg
| alt =
| caption = portrait of Edna Kenton by Carl Van Vechten, 1938
| birth_name = Edna Baldwin Kenton
| birth_date = {{birth date|1876|3|17|mf=y}}
| birth_place = Springfield, Missouri, U.S.
| death_date = {{death date and age|1954|2|28|1876|3|17|mf=y}}
| death_place =
| nationality = American
| alma_mater = Drury College, University of Michigan
| other_names =
| occupation = Author, Suffragist
| years_active =
| known_for =
| notable_works = The Book of Earths
| spouse =
}}
Edna Kenton (March 17, 1876 – February 28, 1954) was an American writer and literary critic. Kenton is best remembered for her 1928 work The Book of Earths, which collected various unusual and controversial theories about a hollow earth, Atlantis, and similar matters.
Early life and education
Edna Baldwin Kenton[https://www.newspapers.com/clip/3274219/edna_kenton_1929/ "Edna Baldwin Kenton: More Antique Jewelry"] Springfield Leader (May 4, 1929): 4. via Newspapers.com {{open access}} was born in Springfield, Missouri in 1876. Her father, James Edgar Kenton, was a bookkeeper. She attended Drury College,[https://www.newspapers.com/clip/3274003/edna_kenton_sells_first_novel_1902/ "Author of Note: Miss Edna Kenton, Formerly of this City, Has a Novel Accepted"] Springfield Missouri Republican (July 6, 1902): 7. via Newspapers.com {{open access}} as did her brother Maurice and her sister Mabel,[https://www.newspapers.com/clip/3274045/obituary_j_e_kenton_1897/ "J. E. Kenton Dead"] Leader-Democrat (December 4, 1897): 1. via Newspapers.com {{open access}} and graduated from the University of Michigan in 1897.[https://books.google.com/books?id=KRviAAAAMAAJ&lpg=PA403 "Book Reviews"] The Michigan Alumnus 9(1903): 403. She worked in Chicago as a young woman, where she knew Theodore Dreiser.Thomas P. Riggio, ed., [https://books.google.com/books?id=R6CK4c_-UEcC&lpg=PA47 Theodore Dreiser, Letters to Women: New Letters, Volume 2] (University of Illinois Press 2009): 47. {{ISBN|9780252091025}}
Career
Kenton's first novel, What Manner of Man (1903), was published while she was still in her twenties.Edna Kenton, [http://catalog.hathitrust.org/Record/007663558 What Manner of Man] (Bowen-Merrill Company 1903). A second, Clem, followed in 1907.Edna Kenton, [http://catalog.hathitrust.org/Record/007663556 Clem] (Century Co. 1907). Later she concentrated on essays and short stories, as a contributor to Harper's Magazine,Edna Kenton, [http://harpers.org/author/ednakenton/ "The Ladies' Next Step"] Harper's Magazine (February 1926). Century Magazine,Mrs. Francis M. Scott, [https://www.newspapers.com/clip/3274091/mrs_francis_scott_vs_edna_kenton/ "The Militant and the Child: Mrs. Francis M. Scott Takes Issue with Miss Edna Kenton on the Burning Question of Feminism--She Declares its Champions are Obsessed with Sex"] New York Times (November 16, 1913): X9. via Newspapers.com {{open access}} Virginia Quarterly Review,Edna Kenton, [http://www.vqronline.org/essay/case-american-woman "The Case of the American Woman"] Virginia Quarterly Review (Summer 1931). and other periodicals. She also served on the advisory board of The Seven Arts, a short-lived but influential literary magazine.Alice Corbin Henderson, [https://www.jstor.org/stable/20571045 "The Seven Arts"] Poetry 9(4)(January 1917): 214-217. Kenton wrote some important criticism of Henry James, especially her essay "Henry James to the Ruminant Reader" (1924), which introduced a novel reading of The Turn of the Screw.Robin P. Hoople, [https://muse.jhu.edu/journals/henry_james_review/v017/17.1hoople.html "Literary Lions and Laughing Love: Edna Kenton and Henry James, 1906"] Henry James Review 17(1)(1996): 77-84.Edward J. Parkinson, [http://www.turnofthescrew.com/ch2.htm The Turn of the Screw: A History of its Critical Interpretations 1898-1979] (PhD diss., St. Louis University 1991). Her last publication was an edited collection of Henry James stories.Leon Edel, [https://www.proquest.com/hnpnewyorktimes/docview/111755893/49AE38DF3CE34C19PQ/12 "Tales that James Forgot"] New York Times (September 10, 1950): 202.
She is credited with writing the screenplay for the silent film Bondage (1917), directed by Ida May Park and starring Dorothy Phillips.
Kenton was an active suffragist[https://www.newspapers.com/clip/3273973/suffragists_quoted_on_voluntary/ "Cite Feminist Words: Suffrage Foes Would Prove 'Free Love' Advocacy"] Washington Post (May 25, 1914): 4. via Newspapers.com {{open access}} and a charter member of Heterodoxy, a feminist debating club based in Greenwich Village.Gerald W. McFarland, [https://books.google.com/books?id=tka_eGVq3NAC&lpg=PA243 Inside Greenwich Village: A New York City Neighborhood, 1898-1918] (University of Massachusetts Press 2005): 243, note 16. {{ISBN|9781558495029}} She served on the executive board of the Provincetown Players, led by fellow Heterodites Eleanor Fitzgerald and Susan Glaspell, and wrote a history of the company, published many years later.Edna Kenton, [https://books.google.com/books?id=wce2eXRTjOYC The Provincetown Players and the Playwrights' Theatre, 1915-1922] (McFarland and Company 2004). {{ISBN|978-0786417780}}Cheryl Black, "Pioneering Theatre Managers: Edna Kenton and Eleanor Fitzgerald of the Provincetown Players" Journal of American Drama and Theatre (Fall 1997): 40-58. She also wrote a biography of her kinsman, frontiersman Simon Kenton,John Chamberlain, [https://www.proquest.com/hnpnewyorktimes/docview/99003759/49AE38DF3CE34C19PQ/3 "Simon Kenton, Kentucky Pioneer: Edna Kenton Writes an Excellent Biography of her Forbear, Who, With Boone and Clark, Helped Create our Middle West"] New York Times (April 20, 1930): 55. and several books based on the letters of Jesuit missionaries in North America.Edna Kenton, [http://catalog.hathitrust.org/Record/001444714 The Indians of North America] (Harcourt Brace 1927).Anne T. Eaton, [https://www.proquest.com/hnpnewyorktimes/docview/100766862/49AE38DF3CE34C19PQ/2 "Books for Children"] (review of Kenton, With Hearts Courageous) New York Times (March 5, 1933): BR18. But it was The Book of Earths (1928), her collection of esoteric theories about a hollow earth, Atlantis, ancient maps, and similar topics, that found the most enthusiastic and lasting readership, and continues in print.Edna Kenton, [https://books.google.com/books?id=p9WtvX24CYAC The Book of Earths] (Kessinger Publishing 2003). {{ISBN|9780766128569}}
Personal life
Edna Kenton died in 1954, age 77; author Leon Edel eulogized her in the New York Times.Leon Edel, [https://www.proquest.com/hnpnewyorktimes/docview/113094950/49AE38DF3CE34C19PQ/1 "Edna Kenton"] New York Times (April 18, 1954): BR25. A small collection of her papers is at Columbia University.[http://www.columbia.edu/cu/lweb/archival/collections/ldpd_4078979/ Edna Kenton Correspondence, 1903-1954] Columbia University Libraries, MS0704.
References
{{reflist|30em}}
External links
- [https://findingaids.library.columbia.edu/ead/nnc-rb/ldpd_4078979 Finding aid to Edna Kenton correspondence at Columbia University. Rare Book & Manuscript Library.]
- [http://brbl-dl.library.yale.edu/vufind/Record/3522746 A photograph of Edna Kenton], taken by Carl Van Vechten in 1938; from the Van Vechten papers at Yale University.
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Category:20th-century American novelists
Category:Suffragists from Missouri
Category:University of Michigan alumni
Category:20th-century American women writers
Category:20th-century American short story writers
Category:20th-century American essayists
Category:American women novelists
Category:American women short story writers
Category:American women essayists