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Winnifred Eaton (writer)

January 01, 1970

Winnifred Eaton (August 21, 1875 – April 8, 1954) was a Canadian author and screenwriter of Chinese-British ancestry.[1] Publishing prolifically under a number of names,[2] most predominantly, the pseudonym Onoto Watanna, she was one of the first North American writers of Asian descent to publish fiction in English.[3]

Winnifred Eaton
Winnifred Eaton c. 1903
Born(1875-08-21)August 21, 1875
Montreal, Quebec, Canada
DiedApril 8, 1954(1954-04-08) (aged 78)
Butte, Montana, USA
Pen nameOnoto Watanna
Period1899–1932
Genrenovelist, screenwriter
Notable worksTama (1910)
Me, A Book of Remembrance
RelativesEdith Maude Eaton, sister

Biography edit

Eaton was the daughter of an English merchant, Edward C. Eaton (1839 – 1915), and a Chinese performer, Achuen "Grace" Amoy (1846 – 1922).[4] The two married in Shanghai in 1863 but relocated to England a year later.[5] Over the next few years, the Eaton family moved back and forth from England to New York several times before finally relocating permanently to Montreal in 1872, where Winnifred was born.[6]

The Eaton family was large; Winnifred was the eighth of 12 children who survived infancy.[7] Edward Eaton struggled to support the family, who moved frequently from one lodging to the next. Nonetheless, the children were raised in an intellectually stimulating environment.[8] Winnifred's eldest sister, Edith Maude Eaton, would become a journalist and, under the pen name Sui Sin Far, an author of stories about Chinese immigrants to the United States, and her older sister Grace Helen Eaton would marry fin-de-siècle editor Walter Blackburn Harte.[9]

Winnifred achieved early success, publishing her first stories in Canadian and U.S. newspapers and magazines as a teenager and publishing her first novel, Miss Nume of Japan, in 1898. She would eventually publish over a dozen novels and dozens of short stories and articles.[10]

While living in New York City, Eaton met journalist Bertrand Babcock, the son of Emma Whitcomb Babcock and Charles Almanzo Babcock. The two married in 1901[11] and had four children, three sons and a daughter; Perry, the oldest, died as a child. Their marriage ended in divorce in 1917, and in the same year, Eaton married Francis Fournier Reeve.[12] Moving to Alberta in her native Canada, Eaton ranched with her husband while continuing to write. For a time in the mid-1920s, she moved to work in the film industry, first to New York in 1924 and then, in 1925, to Hollywood.

She returned to Calgary in 1932 and became an active member of the artistic community, founding Alberta's Little Theatre Movement and serving as the president of the Calgary branch of the Canadian Authors' Association.[13]

In 1954, while returning home from a vacation in California, Eaton fell ill and died of heart failure in Butte, Montana.[11] Following her death, her husband donated funds to build the Reeve Theatre at the University of Calgary.[14]

Literary career edit

Eaton claimed to be only 14 when one of her stories was accepted for publication by a Montreal newspaper that had already published pieces by her sister. In fact, she was almost 20 when her story "A Poor Devil" was published in Metropolitan Magazine. Eaton left home at age 20 to take a job as a stenographer for a newspaper in Kingston, Jamaica. She remained there for less than a year, then moved to Cincinnati, Ohio, and then Chicago, Illinois, where for a time she worked as a typist while continuing to write short stories.[13] Eventually, her compositions were accepted by the prestigious Saturday Evening Post as well as by other popular periodicals. She published her first novel, Miss Nume of Japan capitalizing on her mixed ancestry to pass herself off as a Japanese American by the name of Onoto Watanna (which sounds Japanese but is not Japanese at all).

In 1900, Eaton moved to New York City, where her second major novel, A Japanese Nightingale, was published. It proved extremely successful, being translated into several languages and eventually adapted both as a Broadway play and then, in 1918, as a motion picture. Her novel Tama (1910) was a runaway bestseller and her novel Me, A Book of Remembrance, a thinly disguised memoir, told a titillating tale of a woman's infidelities. Under her Japanese pseudonym, Eaton published many romance novels and short stories and journalistic works that were widely read throughout the United States. Over the course of her 40-year career, Eaton also had articles published in many popular magazines in the United States, including the Ladies' Home Journal and Harper's Monthly.

 
Poster for Klaw & Erlanger's production of A Japanese Nightingale in New York in 1903

In collaboration with her sister Sara Eaton Bosse, Eaton published the Chinese-Japanese Cook Book in 1914. The authors preface their history of Asian food and a representative selection of recipes with the reassurance that "When it is known how simple and clean are the ingredients used to make up these oriental dishes, the Westerner will cease to feel that natural repugnance which assails one when about to taste a strange dish of a new and strange land."[15]

After marrying Frank Reeve and moving to Alberta, Eaton continued to write fiction and journalism, mostly with an Albertan focus. She became intrigued by the financial opportunities offered in the burgeoning film industry and began to write scenarios, or early screenplays, for silent films. After receiving her first credit from Universal Studios in 1921 for the scenario for the silent film False Kisses, she left Calgary in 1924 to work at Universal's New York City offices. The following year, Universal tapped her to lead their scenario department in Hollywood, California. She also ghost-wrote scripts for Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer. She is credited on six films, all produced by Universal; her work on many others remains uncredited.[16]

Eaton's publications, including all her novels, have been collected in the Winnifred Eaton Archive.

Partial bibliography edit

  • His Royal Nibs (1925)
  • Cattle (1923)
  • Sunny-San (1922)
  • Marion: The Story of an Artist's Model (1916); reprint edition edited by Karen E. H. Skinazi (2012)
  • Me: A Book of Remembrance (1915); reprint edition edited by Linda Trinh Moser (1997)
  • Chinese-Japanese Cook Book (with Sara Eaton Bosse, 1914)
  • The Honorable Miss Moonlight (1912)
  • Tama (1910)
  • The Diary of Delia (1907)
  • A Japanese Blossom (1906)
  • The Love of Azalea (1904)
  • Daughters of Nijo (1904)
  • The Heart of Hyacinth (1903); reprint edition edited by Samina Najmi (2000)
  • The Wooing of Wistaria (1902)
  • A Japanese Nightingale (1901); reprint edition (published with Madame Butterfly, by John Luther Long) edited by Jean Lee Cole and Maureen Honey (2002)
  • Miss Numè of Japan (1899); reprint edition edited by Eve Oishi (1999)

Selected filmography edit

Further reading edit

Birchall, Diana. Onoto Watanna: The Story of Winnifred Eaton (2001)

Cole, Jean Lee. The Literary Voices of Winnifred Eaton: Redefining Ethnicity and Authenticity (2002)

Ferens, Dominika. "Affect and Form in the Writings of the Eaton Sisters." In Asian American Literature in Transition, 1850-1930, ed. Josephine Lee and Julia H. Lee (2021)

Ferens, Dominika. Edith and Winnifred Eaton: Chinatown Missions and Japanese Romances (2002)

Lavery, Grace E. Quaint, Exquisite: Victorian Aesthetics and the Idea of Japan (2019)

Lee, Katherine Hyunmi. "The Poetics of Liminality and Misidentification: Winnifred Eaton's Me and Maxine Hong Kingston's The Woman Warrior." Transnational Asian American Literature: Sites and Transits, ed. Shirley Geok-Lin Lim, pp 181-196 (2006)

Sheffer, Jolie A. The Romance of Race: Incest, Miscegenation, and Multiculturalism in the United States, 1880-1930 (2012)

Skinazi, Karen E. H. "'As to Her Race, Its Secret Is Loudly Revealed': Winnifred Eaton's Revision of North American Identity." MELUS: The Journal of the Society for the Study of the Multi-Ethnic Literature of the United States 32(2): 31-53 (2007)

Teng, Emma Jinhua. "The Eaton Sisters and the Figure of the Eurasian." The Cambridge History of Asian American Literature, ed. Min Hyoung Song, pp 661-672 (2015)

Watanna, Onoto. "A Half Caste" and Other Writings, edited by Linda Trinh Moser and Elizabeth Rooney, eds. (2003)

See also edit

References edit

  1. ^ Diana Birchall, Onoto Watanna: The Story of Winnifred Eaton, U of Illinois P, 2001, ISBN 0-252-02607-1, p.4.
  2. ^ Chapman, Mary; Cole, Jean Lee (March 13, 2022). "Pseudonyms used by Winnifred Eaton". The Winnifred Eaton Archive. Retrieved December 5, 2022.
  3. ^ Birchall, Diana (2005). "Winnifred Eaton (Onoto Watanna)". Asian American Writers – via Gale Cengage.
  4. ^ Canada's Early Women Writers. Winnifred Eaton. Canada's Early Women Writers, 18 May 2018.
  5. ^ Chapman, Mary (2016). Becoming Sui Sin Far: Early Fiction, Journalism, and Travel Writing by Edith Maude Eaton. Montreal: McGill-Queen's University Press. pp. xvi. ISBN 978-0-7735-4721-6.
  6. ^ Chapman, Mary; Cole, Jean Lee (March 13, 2022). "Biographical Timeline". The Winnifred Eaton Archive. Retrieved December 5, 2022.
  7. ^ Birchall, Diana (2002). Onoto Watanna: The Story of Winnifred Eaton. Urbana and Chicago: University of Illinois Press. pp. 4–5.
  8. ^ Birchall, Diana (2002). Onoto Watanna: The Story of Winnifred Eaton. Urbana and Chicago: University of Illinois Press. pp. 11–15.
  9. ^ Birchall, Diana (2002). Onoto Watanna: The Story of Winnifred Eaton. University of Illinois Press. p. 20.
  10. ^ Chapman, Mary; Cole, Jean Lee (March 13, 2022). "The Winnifred Eaton Archive". The Winnifred Eaton Archive. Retrieved December 5, 2022.
  11. ^ a b Birchall, Diana (2002). Onoto Watanna: The Story of Winnifred Eaton. Urbana and Chicago: University of Illinois Press. p. 201. ISBN 9780252026072.
  12. ^ Birchall, Diana (2002). Onoto Watanna: The Story of Winnifred Eaton. University of Illinois Press. p. 130.
  13. ^ a b Chapman, Mary; Cole, Jean Lee (March 13, 2022). "Biographical Timeline". The Winnifred Eaton Archive. Retrieved December 5, 2022.
  14. ^ "Reeve Theatre Built History". University of Calgary Archives and Special Collections. Retrieved December 5, 2022.
  15. ^ Watanna, Onoto; Bosse, Sara. "Chinese-Japanese Cook Book". Winnifred Eaton Archive. Retrieved December 5, 2022.
  16. ^ Cole, Jean Lee (2002). The Literary Voices of Winnifred Eaton: Redefining Ethnicity and Authenticity. New Brunswick, New Jersey: Rutgers University Press. pp. 195–197. ISBN 9780813530871.

External links edit

  • Works by Winnifred Eaton at Project Gutenberg
  • Works by Winnifred Eaton Reeve at Faded Page (Canada)
  • Works by Winnifred Eaton at LibriVox (public domain audiobooks)  
  • The Winnifred Eaton Archive Peer-edited scholarly archive of the collected works of Winnifred Eaton, University of British Columbia
  • Essays from a conference and exhibit on Winnifred Eaton, Mount Allison University
  • Winnifred Eaton Reeve Fonds Guide to the collection of her papers at University of Calgary Archives and Special Collections
  • Onoto Watanna (Winnifred Eaton) entry in Donna M. Campbell's "American Authors" site
  • Winnifred Eaten (Onoto Watanna) entry in the Canadian Encyclopedia
  • "Winnifred Eaton". Women Film Pioneers Project.
  • Winnifred Eaton, from Wikinfo, licensed under the GNU Free Documentation License.

January 01, 1970
winnifred, eaton, writer, winnifred, eaton, august, 1875, april, 1954, canadian, author, screenwriter, chinese, british, ancestry, publishing, prolifically, under, number, names, most, predominantly, pseudonym, onoto, watanna, first, north, american, writers, . Winnifred Eaton August 21 1875 April 8 1954 was a Canadian author and screenwriter of Chinese British ancestry 1 Publishing prolifically under a number of names 2 most predominantly the pseudonym Onoto Watanna she was one of the first North American writers of Asian descent to publish fiction in English 3 Winnifred EatonWinnifred Eaton c 1903Born 1875 08 21 August 21 1875Montreal Quebec CanadaDiedApril 8 1954 1954 04 08 aged 78 Butte Montana USAPen nameOnoto WatannaPeriod1899 1932Genrenovelist screenwriterNotable worksTama 1910 Me A Book of RemembranceRelativesEdith Maude Eaton sister Contents 1 Biography 2 Literary career 3 Partial bibliography 4 Selected filmography 5 Further reading 6 See also 7 References 8 External linksBiography editEaton was the daughter of an English merchant Edward C Eaton 1839 1915 and a Chinese performer Achuen Grace Amoy 1846 1922 4 The two married in Shanghai in 1863 but relocated to England a year later 5 Over the next few years the Eaton family moved back and forth from England to New York several times before finally relocating permanently to Montreal in 1872 where Winnifred was born 6 The Eaton family was large Winnifred was the eighth of 12 children who survived infancy 7 Edward Eaton struggled to support the family who moved frequently from one lodging to the next Nonetheless the children were raised in an intellectually stimulating environment 8 Winnifred s eldest sister Edith Maude Eaton would become a journalist and under the pen name Sui Sin Far an author of stories about Chinese immigrants to the United States and her older sister Grace Helen Eaton would marry fin de siecle editor Walter Blackburn Harte 9 Winnifred achieved early success publishing her first stories in Canadian and U S newspapers and magazines as a teenager and publishing her first novel Miss Nume of Japan in 1898 She would eventually publish over a dozen novels and dozens of short stories and articles 10 While living in New York City Eaton met journalist Bertrand Babcock the son of Emma Whitcomb Babcock and Charles Almanzo Babcock The two married in 1901 11 and had four children three sons and a daughter Perry the oldest died as a child Their marriage ended in divorce in 1917 and in the same year Eaton married Francis Fournier Reeve 12 Moving to Alberta in her native Canada Eaton ranched with her husband while continuing to write For a time in the mid 1920s she moved to work in the film industry first to New York in 1924 and then in 1925 to Hollywood She returned to Calgary in 1932 and became an active member of the artistic community founding Alberta s Little Theatre Movement and serving as the president of the Calgary branch of the Canadian Authors Association 13 In 1954 while returning home from a vacation in California Eaton fell ill and died of heart failure in Butte Montana 11 Following her death her husband donated funds to build the Reeve Theatre at the University of Calgary 14 Literary career editEaton claimed to be only 14 when one of her stories was accepted for publication by a Montreal newspaper that had already published pieces by her sister In fact she was almost 20 when her story A Poor Devil was published in Metropolitan Magazine Eaton left home at age 20 to take a job as a stenographer for a newspaper in Kingston Jamaica She remained there for less than a year then moved to Cincinnati Ohio and then Chicago Illinois where for a time she worked as a typist while continuing to write short stories 13 Eventually her compositions were accepted by the prestigious Saturday Evening Post as well as by other popular periodicals She published her first novel Miss Nume of Japan capitalizing on her mixed ancestry to pass herself off as a Japanese American by the name of Onoto Watanna which sounds Japanese but is not Japanese at all In 1900 Eaton moved to New York City where her second major novel A Japanese Nightingale was published It proved extremely successful being translated into several languages and eventually adapted both as a Broadway play and then in 1918 as a motion picture Her novel Tama 1910 was a runaway bestseller and her novel Me A Book of Remembrance a thinly disguised memoir told a titillating tale of a woman s infidelities Under her Japanese pseudonym Eaton published many romance novels and short stories and journalistic works that were widely read throughout the United States Over the course of her 40 year career Eaton also had articles published in many popular magazines in the United States including the Ladies Home Journal and Harper s Monthly nbsp Poster for Klaw amp Erlanger s production of A Japanese Nightingale in New York in 1903 In collaboration with her sister Sara Eaton Bosse Eaton published the Chinese Japanese Cook Book in 1914 The authors preface their history of Asian food and a representative selection of recipes with the reassurance that When it is known how simple and clean are the ingredients used to make up these oriental dishes the Westerner will cease to feel that natural repugnance which assails one when about to taste a strange dish of a new and strange land 15 After marrying Frank Reeve and moving to Alberta Eaton continued to write fiction and journalism mostly with an Albertan focus She became intrigued by the financial opportunities offered in the burgeoning film industry and began to write scenarios or early screenplays for silent films After receiving her first credit from Universal Studios in 1921 for the scenario for the silent film False Kisses she left Calgary in 1924 to work at Universal s New York City offices The following year Universal tapped her to lead their scenario department in Hollywood California She also ghost wrote scripts for Metro Goldwyn Mayer She is credited on six films all produced by Universal her work on many others remains uncredited 16 Eaton s publications including all her novels have been collected in the Winnifred Eaton Archive Partial bibliography editHis Royal Nibs 1925 Cattle 1923 Sunny San 1922 Marion The Story of an Artist s Model 1916 reprint edition edited by Karen E H Skinazi 2012 Me A Book of Remembrance 1915 reprint edition edited by Linda Trinh Moser 1997 Chinese Japanese Cook Book with Sara Eaton Bosse 1914 The Honorable Miss Moonlight 1912 Tama 1910 The Diary of Delia 1907 A Japanese Blossom 1906 The Love of Azalea 1904 Daughters of Nijo 1904 The Heart of Hyacinth 1903 reprint edition edited by Samina Najmi 2000 The Wooing of Wistaria 1902 A Japanese Nightingale 1901 reprint edition published with Madame Butterfly by John Luther Long edited by Jean Lee Cole and Maureen Honey 2002 Miss Nume of Japan 1899 reprint edition edited by Eve Oishi 1999 Selected filmography editEast Is West 1930 Young Desire 1930 Undertow 1930 Shanghai Lady 1929 The Mississippi Gambler 1929 False Kisses 1921 Further reading editBirchall Diana Onoto Watanna The Story of Winnifred Eaton 2001 Cole Jean Lee The Literary Voices of Winnifred Eaton Redefining Ethnicity and Authenticity 2002 Ferens Dominika Affect and Form in the Writings of the Eaton Sisters In Asian American Literature in Transition 1850 1930 ed Josephine Lee and Julia H Lee 2021 Ferens Dominika Edith and Winnifred Eaton Chinatown Missions and Japanese Romances 2002 Lavery Grace E Quaint Exquisite Victorian Aesthetics and the Idea of Japan 2019 Lee Katherine Hyunmi The Poetics of Liminality and Misidentification Winnifred Eaton s Me and Maxine Hong Kingston s The Woman Warrior Transnational Asian American Literature Sites and Transits ed Shirley Geok Lin Lim pp 181 196 2006 Sheffer Jolie A The Romance of Race Incest Miscegenation and Multiculturalism in the United States 1880 1930 2012 Skinazi Karen E H As to Her Race Its Secret Is Loudly Revealed Winnifred Eaton s Revision of North American Identity MELUS The Journal of the Society for the Study of the Multi Ethnic Literature of the United States 32 2 31 53 2007 Teng Emma Jinhua The Eaton Sisters and the Figure of the Eurasian The Cambridge History of Asian American Literature ed Min Hyoung Song pp 661 672 2015 Watanna Onoto A Half Caste and Other Writings edited by Linda Trinh Moser and Elizabeth Rooney eds 2003 See also edit nbsp Literature portal List of Asian American writers List of women writersReferences edit Diana Birchall Onoto Watanna The Story of Winnifred Eaton U of Illinois P 2001 ISBN 0 252 02607 1 p 4 Chapman Mary Cole Jean Lee March 13 2022 Pseudonyms used by Winnifred Eaton The Winnifred Eaton Archive Retrieved December 5 2022 Birchall Diana 2005 Winnifred Eaton Onoto Watanna Asian American Writers via Gale Cengage Canada s Early Women Writers Winnifred Eaton Canada s Early Women Writers 18 May 2018 Chapman Mary 2016 Becoming Sui Sin Far Early Fiction Journalism and Travel Writing by Edith Maude Eaton Montreal McGill Queen s University Press pp xvi ISBN 978 0 7735 4721 6 Chapman Mary Cole Jean Lee March 13 2022 Biographical Timeline The Winnifred Eaton Archive Retrieved December 5 2022 Birchall Diana 2002 Onoto Watanna The Story of Winnifred Eaton Urbana and Chicago University of Illinois Press pp 4 5 Birchall Diana 2002 Onoto Watanna The Story of Winnifred Eaton Urbana and Chicago University of Illinois Press pp 11 15 Birchall Diana 2002 Onoto Watanna The Story of Winnifred Eaton University of Illinois Press p 20 Chapman Mary Cole Jean Lee March 13 2022 The Winnifred Eaton Archive The Winnifred Eaton Archive Retrieved December 5 2022 a b Birchall Diana 2002 Onoto Watanna The Story of Winnifred Eaton Urbana and Chicago University of Illinois Press p 201 ISBN 9780252026072 Birchall Diana 2002 Onoto Watanna The Story of Winnifred Eaton University of Illinois Press p 130 a b Chapman Mary Cole Jean Lee March 13 2022 Biographical Timeline The Winnifred Eaton Archive Retrieved December 5 2022 Reeve Theatre Built History University of Calgary Archives and Special Collections Retrieved December 5 2022 Watanna Onoto Bosse Sara Chinese Japanese Cook Book Winnifred Eaton Archive Retrieved December 5 2022 Cole Jean Lee 2002 The Literary Voices of Winnifred Eaton Redefining Ethnicity and Authenticity New Brunswick New Jersey Rutgers University Press pp 195 197 ISBN 9780813530871 External links editWorks by Winnifred Eaton at Project Gutenberg Works by Winnifred Eaton Reeve at Faded Page Canada Works by Winnifred Eaton at LibriVox public domain audiobooks nbsp The Winnifred Eaton Archive Peer edited scholarly archive of the collected works of Winnifred Eaton University of British Columbia Winnifred Eaton Project Essays from a conference and exhibit on Winnifred Eaton Mount Allison University Winnifred Eaton Reeve Fonds Guide to the collection of her papers at University of Calgary Archives and Special Collections Onoto Watanna Winnifred Eaton entry in Donna M Campbell s American Authors site Winnifred Eaten Onoto Watanna entry in the Canadian Encyclopedia Winnifred Eaton Women Film Pioneers Project Winnifred Eaton from Wikinfo licensed under the GNU Free Documentation License Retrieved from https en wikipedia org w index php title Winnifred Eaton writer amp oldid 1211985582, wikipedia, wiki, book, books, library,

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