Inda eaton biography of alberta

  • Winnifred Eaton Reeve, more famously known in the early 20th century by her pen name, Onoto Watanna, was the first Asian North American novelist.
  • In 1917, after divorcing Babcock, Eaton married American businessman Francis Reeve, moved to Alberta, and rebranded herself as “Winnifred Reeve.
  • The Canadian Spirit in Our Literature, Biography of Life in Alberta, Indian Summer (long version), Plain Pig, Writer Tells How She Came to Write Cattle, Elspeth.

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    Works by Winnifred Eaton

    Anonymous. “Savage in Silks.” ms., 1917-1926, Winnifred Eaton Reeve Fonds, 12.18.

    Anonymous. “Man From Canada.” ms., 1917-1935, Winnifred Eaton Reeve Fonds, 5.1.1.

    Anonymous. “Relatively Speaking.” ms., 1917-1935, Winnifred Eaton Reeve Fonds, 7.12.

    Anonymous. “Telephone Girl.” ms., 1917-1935. Winnifred Eaton Reeve Fonds, 17.8.

    Anonymous. “The Other Woman.” ms., 1917-1935, Winnifred Eaton Reeve Fonds, 6.6.

    Anonymous. “Gipsy.” ms., 1917-1935, Winnifred Eaton Reeve Fonds, 5.6.

    Anonymous. “Happiness Preferred.” ms., 1917-1935, Winnifred Eaton Reeve Fonds, 7.6.

    Anonymous. “Boom City.” ms., 1917-1935, Winnifred Eaton Reeve Fonds, 7.14.

    Anonymous. “Hetty.” ms., 1917-1935, Winnifred Eaton Reeve Fonds, 6.16.

    Anonymous. “Cowboy Racket.” ms., 1917-1935, Winnifred Eaton Reeve Fonds, 7.9.

    Anonymous. “How They Cast.” ms., 1917-1935, Motion Picture Classic, Winnifred Eaton Reeve Fonds, 18.1.

    Anonymous. “Colette.” ms., 1917-1935, Winnifred Eaton Reeve Fonds, 8.

  • inda eaton biography of alberta

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    YOU CAN’T RUN AWAY FROM YOURSELF

    I was tired of writing and sick of New York. I felt like a human fly caught in the cogs of its mighty machinery. An immense nostalgia took possession of me—a longing for something other than I had known. Writing became a sort of torment—something I had literally to drive myself to. I was in a pathological condition.

    I had written hundreds of short stories and eighteen novels—all concerned with Japan. I was “labelled” Japanese. The little oriental blood in me did not make me a real “Jap” any more than the drop of French in me made me a Frenchwoman. However, my Japanese stories were enjoying a vogue. One of them sold over 200,000 copies and was translated into nearly every language. Nevertheless, I dreamed of the day when I could escape from the treadmill of writing about a subject I did not love. They said to me: “Stick to your last. You are doing fine!” Perhaps I was, but vogues are transient things.

    Came a day when publishers no longer made me t

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    Read an Excerpt from boskap by Early Asian-Canadian Literary Superstar Winnifred Eaton, Newly Republished After 100 Years

    News and Interviews

    Winnifred Eaton was not only one of the first North American writers of Asian nedstigning to publish fiction in English, she was one of the most successful novelists of her day. Born in Montreal to an English father and a kinesisk mother, she published her first story at 20 and went on to publish numerous novels, short stories, and even work on several early Hollywood films. 

    Her novel, Cattle, however (written later in her life when she and her second husband moved to Alberta to ranch) was not what was expected from the bestselling writer. Eaton herself described the novel as "act[ing] like a bomb" in her publisher's office. She was informed that "it had caused more heated discussion and argument than any manuscript [in] years". A close friend at her publisher wrote her what Eaton described as "a fatherly letter" in which he deplored th