{"id":54904,"date":"2017-09-06T03:28:03","date_gmt":"2017-09-06T03:28:03","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.mixedracestudies.org\/?p=54904"},"modified":"2017-09-07T20:16:28","modified_gmt":"2017-09-07T20:16:28","slug":"edith-eatons-expanding-oeuvre","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/mixedracestudies.org\/wp\/?p=54904","title":{"rendered":"Edith Eaton\u2019s Expanding Oeuvre"},"content":{"rendered":"

Edith Eaton\u2019s Expanding Oeuvre<\/strong><\/em><\/a><\/p>\n

American Periodicals: A Journal of History & Criticism<\/a>
\nVolume 27, Number 1, 2017<\/a>
\npages 6-10<\/p>\n

Mary Chapman<\/strong><\/a>, Professor of English
\nUniversity of British Columbia, Vancouver, British Columbia, Canada<\/em><\/p>\n

Since the early 1980s, when S. E. Solberg<\/a> published a short checklist of twenty-two works of fiction and journalism by Chinese American author Sui Sin Far<\/a> (Edith Eaton), our knowledge of her oeuvre<\/a> has grown considerably. By 2007, through the efforts of Annette White-Parks and Amy Ling, as well as Dominika Ferens and Martha Cutter<\/a>, Eaton\u2019s oeuvre included about one hundred works of fiction, poetry, and journalism, many of which addressed the experiences of diasporic Chinese in North America<\/a>. In the past ten years, I have discovered more than one hundred fifty texts by Eaton, some of which are collected in Becoming Sui Sin Far: Early Fiction, Journalism and Travel Writing by Edith Maude Eaton<\/em><\/a>.1<\/sup> Eaton\u2019s expanded oeuvre demonstrates that she was a much more complicated author than formerly believed, a writer who worked in a range of genres and styles, addressed numerous themes beyond the Chinese diaspora, and published in a wide assortment of turn-of-the-century magazines and newspapers in three national contexts: the United States<\/a>, Canada<\/a>, and Jamaica<\/a>.<\/p>\n

To locate uncollected works by Eaton, I took inspiration from the impressive detective work of White-Parks and Diana Birchall,2<\/sup> who wrote biographies of Eaton and her sister Winnifred (Onoto Watanna<\/a>), respectively, as well as from Ferens\u2019s recovery of Eaton\u2019s Jamaican journalism. To begin, I developed a list of periodicals and newspapers in which Eaton published or to which she submitted work, based on information about twenty-four periodicals provided in the acknowledgments of her only book, Mrs. Spring Fragrance<\/em><\/a> (1912):<\/p>\n

I have to thank the Editors of The Independent<\/em>, Out West, Hampton\u2019s<\/em>, The Century<\/em>, Delineator<\/em>, Ladies\u2019 Home Journal<\/em>, Designer<\/em>, New Idea<\/em>, Short Stories<\/em>, Traveler<\/em>, Good Housekeeping<\/em>, Housekeeper<\/em>, Gentlewoman<\/em>, New York Evening Post<\/em>, Holland\u2019s<\/em>, Little Folks<\/em>, American Motherhood<\/em>, New England<\/em>, Youth\u2019s Companion<\/em>, Montreal Witness<\/em>, Children\u2019s<\/em>, Overland<\/em>, Sunset<\/em>, and Westerner<\/em> magazines, who were kind enough to care for my children when I sent them out into the world, for permitting the dear ones to return to me to be grouped together within this volume.3<\/sup><\/p><\/blockquote>\n

Inspired by Jean Lee Cole\u2019s<\/a> recovery of periodical works by Winnifred Eaton, I also scoured Eaton\u2019s autobiographical writings, correspondence with editors, and reviews of and introductions to her periodical publications for any mention of publications to which she may have submitted work.4<\/sup> Eaton\u2019s reference in \u201cLeaves from the Mental Portfolio of an Eurasian\u201d to \u201clocal [Montreal<\/a>] papers\u201d that gave her a \u201cnumber of assignments, including most of the local Chinese reporting,\u201d5<\/sup> for example, prompted me to consult late 1880s and 1890s issues of the Montreal Star<\/em>, Montreal Witness<\/em>, and Montreal Gazette<\/em>. In \u201cA Word from Miss Eaton\u201d in the Westerner<\/em>, Eaton mentions publishing in the Seattle Post-Intelligencer<\/em>.6<\/sup> The literary editor of the Westerner<\/em> also notes in his preamble to \u201cA Word from Sui Sin Far\u201d that Eaton\u2019s works had appeared in Woman\u2019s Home Companion<\/em>.7<\/sup> Eaton\u2019s correspondence with Land of Sunshine<\/em> editor Charles Lummis<\/a> and Century<\/em> editor Robert Underwood Johnson<\/a>, as well as a letter that Los Angeles Express<\/em> editor Samuel Clover wrote to Johnson, also mention periodicals to which Eaton submitted fiction.8<\/sup> To this list of publications, I added Fly Leaf<\/em>, Lotus<\/em>, the Chautauquan<\/em>, and the Boston Globe<\/em>\u2014publications in which White-Parks and Ling had located works by Eaton\u2014as well as Metropolitan Magazine<\/em>, Gall\u2019s News Letter<\/em>, and Leslie\u2019s Weekly<\/em>\u2014periodicals in which Cutter, Ferens, and June Howard had located additional texts.9<\/sup><\/p>\n

I then searched as many issues of these publications as possible for relevant years, in either digitized or paper form. Given the brevity of Eaton\u2019s career (twenty-six years between 1888 and her death in 1914), looking through bound volumes or tables of contents for key years of nondigitized (and sometimes short-lived) monthly magazines was not arduous. Comprehensive searches of nondigitized daily newspapers were more challenging, however, so I searched the Los Angeles Express<\/em>, Montreal Star<\/em>, Montreal Gazette<\/em>, Montreal Witness<\/em>, Chicago Evening Post<\/em>, Seattle Post-Intelligencer<\/em>, and New York Evening Post<\/em> for only particular periods during which Eaton was likely to…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Edith Eaton\u2019s Expanding Oeuvre American Periodicals: A Journal of History & Criticism Volume 27, Number 1, 2017 pages 6-10 Mary Chapman, Professor of English University of British Columbia, Vancouver, British Columbia, Canada Since the early 1980s, when S. E. Solberg published a short checklist of twenty-two works of fiction and journalism by Chinese American author […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[12,16,19,21,8413,1196,8,20,25],"tags":[3862,27494,3068,3318,12899,3319],"class_list":["post-54904","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-articles","category-asia","category-canada","category-latincarib","category-communications","category-literary-criticism","category-media-archive","category-usa","category-women","tag-american-periodicals","tag-american-periodicals-a-journal-of-history-criticism","tag-edith-eaton","tag-edith-maude-eaton","tag-mary-chapman","tag-sui-sin-far"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/mixedracestudies.org\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/54904","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/mixedracestudies.org\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/mixedracestudies.org\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mixedracestudies.org\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mixedracestudies.org\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=54904"}],"version-history":[{"count":4,"href":"https:\/\/mixedracestudies.org\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/54904\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":54924,"href":"https:\/\/mixedracestudies.org\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/54904\/revisions\/54924"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/mixedracestudies.org\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=54904"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mixedracestudies.org\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=54904"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mixedracestudies.org\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=54904"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}