Edna Kenton

American writer and literary critic

Edna Kenton
portrait of Edna Kenton by Carl Van Vechten, 1938
Born	Edna Baldwin Kenton (1876-03-17)March 17, 1876 Springfield, Missouri
Died	February 28, 1954(1954-02-28) (aged 77)
Nationality	American
Alma mater	Drury College, University of Michigan
Occupation(s)	Author, Suffragist
Notable work	The Book of Earths

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^[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 kinsman, frontiersman 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

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

External links

Finding aid to Edna Kenton correspondence at Columbia University. Rare Book & Manuscript Library.
A photograph of Edna Kenton, taken by Carl Van Vechten in 1938; from the Van Vechten papers at Yale University.