{{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 = | 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<ref>[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}}</ref> was born in Springfield, Missouri in 1876. Her father, James Edgar Kenton, was a bookkeeper. She attended Drury College,<ref>[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}}</ref> as did her brother Maurice and her sister Mabel,<ref>[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}}</ref> and graduated from the University of Michigan in 1897.<ref>[https://books.google.com/books?id=KRviAAAAMAAJ&lpg=PA403 "Book Reviews"] ''The Michigan Alumnus'' 9(1903): 403.</ref> She worked in Chicago as a young woman, where she knew Theodore Dreiser.<ref>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}}</ref>
==Career== Kenton's first novel, ''What Manner of Man'' (1903), was published while she was still in her twenties.<ref>Edna Kenton, [http://catalog.hathitrust.org/Record/007663558 ''What Manner of Man''] (Bowen-Merrill Company 1903).</ref> A second, ''Clem'', followed in 1907.<ref>Edna Kenton, [http://catalog.hathitrust.org/Record/007663556 ''Clem''] (Century Co. 1907).</ref> Later she concentrated on essays and short stories, as a contributor to ''Harper's Magazine'',<ref>Edna Kenton, [http://harpers.org/author/ednakenton/ "The Ladies' Next Step"] ''Harper's Magazine'' (February 1926).</ref> ''Century Magazine'',<ref>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}}</ref> ''Virginia Quarterly Review'',<ref>Edna Kenton, [http://www.vqronline.org/essay/case-american-woman "The Case of the American Woman"] ''Virginia Quarterly Review'' (Summer 1931).</ref> and other periodicals. She also served on the advisory board of ''The Seven Arts'', a short-lived but influential literary magazine.<ref>Alice Corbin Henderson, [https://www.jstor.org/stable/20571045 "The Seven Arts"] ''Poetry'' 9(4)(January 1917): 214-217.</ref> 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''.<ref>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.</ref><ref>Edward J. Parkinson, [http://www.turnofthescrew.com/ch2.htm ''The Turn of the Screw: A History of its Critical Interpretations 1898-1979''] {{Webarchive|url=https://web.archive.org/web/20151202100926/http://www.turnofthescrew.com/ch2.htm |date=2015-12-02 }} (PhD diss., St. Louis University 1991).</ref> Her last publication was an edited collection of Henry James stories.<ref>Leon Edel, [https://www.proquest.com/hnpnewyorktimes/docview/111755893/49AE38DF3CE34C19PQ/12 "Tales that James Forgot"] ''New York Times'' (September 10, 1950): 202.</ref>
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<ref>[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}}</ref> and a charter member of Heterodoxy, a feminist debating club based in Greenwich Village.<ref>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}}</ref> 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.<ref>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}}</ref><ref>Cheryl Black, "Pioneering Theatre Managers: Edna Kenton and Eleanor Fitzgerald of the Provincetown Players" ''Journal of American Drama and Theatre'' (Fall 1997): 40-58.</ref> She also wrote a biography of her kinsman, frontiersman Simon Kenton,<ref>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.</ref> and several books based on the letters of Jesuit missionaries in North America.<ref>Edna Kenton, [http://catalog.hathitrust.org/Record/001444714 ''The Indians of North America''] (Harcourt Brace 1927).</ref><ref>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.</ref> 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.<ref>Edna Kenton, [https://books.google.com/books?id=p9WtvX24CYAC ''The Book of Earths''] (Kessinger Publishing 2003). {{ISBN|9780766128569}}</ref>
==Personal life== Edna Kenton died in 1954, age 77; author Leon Edel eulogized her in the ''New York Times''.<ref>Leon Edel, [https://www.proquest.com/hnpnewyorktimes/docview/113094950/49AE38DF3CE34C19PQ/1 "Edna Kenton"] ''New York Times'' (April 18, 1954): BR25.</ref> A small collection of her papers is at Columbia University.<ref>[http://www.columbia.edu/cu/lweb/archival/collections/ldpd_4078979/ Edna Kenton Correspondence, 1903-1954] Columbia University Libraries, MS0704.</ref>
==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. {{authority control}}
{{DEFAULTSORT:Kenton, Edna}} Category:1876 births Category:1954 deaths Category:20th-century American novelists Category:Suffragists from Missouri Category:University of Michigan alumni Category:20th-century American women novelists Category:20th-century American short story writers Category:20th-century American essayists Category:American women short story writers Category:American women essayists Category:Writers from Springfield, Missouri Category:Novelists from Missouri Category:American women human rights activists