Edna Kenton

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.

Edna Kenton
portrait of Edna Kenton by Carl Van Vechten, 1938
Born
Edna Baldwin Kenton

(1876-03-17)March 17, 1876
Springfield, Missouri
DiedFebruary 28, 1954(1954-02-28) (aged 77)
NationalityAmerican
Alma materDrury College, University of Michigan
OccupationAuthor, Suffragist
Notable work
The Book of Earths

Early life and education

Edna Baldwin Kenton[1] was born in Springfield, Missouri in 1876. Her father, James Edgar Kenton, was a bookkeeper. She attended Drury College,[2] as did her brother Maurice and her sister Mabel,[3] and graduated from the University of Michigan in 1897.[4] She worked in Chicago as a young woman, where she knew Theodore Dreiser.[5]

Career

Kenton's first novel, What Manner of Man (1903), was published while she was still in her twenties.[6] A second, Clem, followed in 1907.[7] Later she concentrated on essays and short stories, as a contributor to Harper's Magazine,[8] Century Magazine,[9] Virginia Quarterly Review,[10] and other periodicals. She also served on the advisory board of The Seven Arts, a short-lived but influential literary magazine.[11] 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.[12][13] Her last publication was an edited collection of Henry James stories.[14]

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[15] and a charter member of Heterodoxy, a feminist debating club based in Greenwich Village.[16] 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.[17][18] She also wrote a biography of her ancestor Simon Kenton,[19] and several books based on the letters of Jesuit missionaries in North America.[20][21] 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.[22]

Personal life

Edna Kenton died in 1954, age 77; author Leon Edel eulogized her in the New York Times.[23] A small collection of her papers is at Columbia University.[24]

References
  1. "Edna Baldwin Kenton: More Antique Jewelry" Springfield Leader (May 4, 1929): 4. via Newspapers.com
  2. "Author of Note: Miss Edna Kenton, Formerly of this City, Has a Novel Accepted" Springfield Missouri Republican (July 6, 1902): 7. via Newspapers.com
  3. "J. E. Kenton Dead" Leader-Democrat (December 4, 1897): 1. via Newspapers.com
  4. "Book Reviews" The Michigan Alumnus 9(1903): 403.
  5. Thomas P. Riggio, ed., Theodore Dreiser, Letters to Women: New Letters, Volume 2 (University of Illinois Press 2009): 47. ISBN 9780252091025
  6. Edna Kenton, What Manner of Man (Bowen-Merrill Company 1903).
  7. Edna Kenton, Clem (Century Co. 1907).
  8. Edna Kenton, "The Ladies' Next Step" Harper's Magazine (February 1926).
  9. Mrs. Francis M. Scott, "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
  10. Edna Kenton, "The Case of the American Woman" Virginia Quarterly Review (Summer 1931).
  11. Alice Corbin Henderson, "The Seven Arts" Poetry 9(4)(January 1917): 214-217.
  12. Robin P. Hoople, "Literary Lions and Laughing Love: Edna Kenton and Henry James, 1906" Henry James Review 17(1)(1996): 77-84.
  13. Edward J. Parkinson, The Turn of the Screw: A History of its Critical Interpretations 1898-1979 (PhD diss., St. Louis University 1991).
  14. Leon Edel, "Tales that James Forgot" New York Times (September 10, 1950): 202.
  15. "Cite Feminist Words: Suffrage Foes Would Prove 'Free Love' Advocacy" Washington Post (May 25, 1914): 4. via Newspapers.com
  16. Gerald W. McFarland, Inside Greenwich Village: A New York City Neighborhood, 1898-1918 (University of Massachusetts Press 2005): 243, note 16. ISBN 9781558495029
  17. Edna Kenton, The Provincetown Players and the Playwrights' Theatre, 1915-1922 (McFarland and Company 2004). ISBN 978-0786417780
  18. Cheryl Black, "Pioneering Theatre Managers: Edna Kenton and Eleanor Fitzgerald of the Provincetown Players" Journal of American Drama and Theatre (Fall 1997): 40-58.
  19. John Chamberlain, "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.
  20. Edna Kenton, The Indians of North America (Harcourt Brace 1927).
  21. Anne T. Eaton, "Books for Children" (review of Kenton, With Hearts Courageous) New York Times (March 5, 1933): BR18.
  22. Edna Kenton, The Book of Earths (Kessinger Publishing 2003). ISBN 9780766128569
  23. Leon Edel, "Edna Kenton" New York Times (April 18, 1954): BR25.
  24. Edna Kenton Correspondence, 1903-1954 Columbia University Libraries, MS0704.
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