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"Edna Baldwin Kenton: More Antique Jewelry" Springfield Leader (May 4, 1929): 4. via Newspapers.com was born in Springfield, Missouri in 1876. Her father, James Edgar Kenton, was a bookkeeper. She attended Drury College,"Author of Note: Miss Edna Kenton, Formerly of this City, Has a Novel Accepted" Springfield Missouri Republican (July 6, 1902): 7. via Newspapers.com as did her brother Maurice and her sister Mabel,"J. E. Kenton Dead" Leader-Democrat (December 4, 1897): 1. via Newspapers.com and graduated from the University of Michigan in 1897."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., Theodore Dreiser, Letters to Women: New Letters, Volume 2 (University of Illinois Press 2009): 47.
Career Kenton's first novel, What Manner of Man (1903), was published while she was still in her twenties.Edna Kenton, What Manner of Man (Bowen-Merrill Company 1903). A second, Clem, followed in 1907.Edna Kenton, Clem (Century Co. 1907). Later she concentrated on essays and short stories, as a contributor to Harper's Magazine,Edna Kenton, "The Ladies' Next Step" Harper's Magazine (February 1926). Century Magazine,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 Virginia Quarterly Review,Edna Kenton, "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, "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, "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). Her last publication was an edited collection of Henry James stories.Leon Edel, "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"Cite Feminist Words: Suffrage Foes Would Prove 'Free Love' Advocacy" Washington Post (May 25, 1914): 4. via Newspapers.com and a charter member of Heterodoxy, a feminist debating club based in Greenwich Village.Gerald W. McFarland, Inside Greenwich Village: A New York City Neighborhood, 1898-1918 (University of Massachusetts Press 2005): 243, note 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.Edna Kenton, The Provincetown Players and the Playwrights' Theatre, 1915-1922 (McFarland and Company 2004). 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, "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, 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. 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, The Book of Earths (Kessinger Publishing 2003).
Personal life Edna Kenton died in 1954, age 77; author Leon Edel eulogized her in the New York Times.Leon Edel, "Edna Kenton" New York Times (April 18, 1954): BR25. A small collection of her papers is at Columbia University.Edna Kenton Correspondence, 1903-1954 Columbia University Libraries, MS0704.
References
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.