| Main entry | Wood, Joanna E. |
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| Birth place | Lesmahagow, Lanarkshire, Scotland |
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| Birth date | 28 December 1867 |
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| Death place | Detroit, Michigan, USA |
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| Death date | 1 May 1927 |
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| Identifier | 0449 |
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| Birth name | Joanna Ellen Wood |
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| Alternate names | Jean D'Arc; Nelly |
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| Marital status | single |
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| Religious affiliation | Presbyterian |
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| Paid work | journalism |
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| Biography | Joanna Ellen Wood (1867-1927) was born in Lanarkshire, Scotland as the youngest daughter in a large family of eleven children. Her parents, Robert and Agnes Wood, were Presbyterians who moved their family first to the United States when Joanna was only about two years old, and then to Canada in 1874, when she was fourteen. The family settled on a farm at Queenston H, near Niagara, which remained Wood's home base until it was sold in 1906. Educated at St. Catharines District Grammar School, she reportedly first published in American periodicals, under the pseudonym "Jean D'Arc," but nothing has been found. Also unverified are later claims in the CANADIAN MAGAZINE that she had won several thousand dollars in New York short story competitions, and that her story "The Mind of a God"(1898) received a prize of five hundred dollars. Her first verifiable publication was her novel, THE UNTEMPERED WIND (1894), which showed the possible influence of Thomas Hardy and was deliberately vague in its setting, allowing for Americans to identify with the story of an unwed mother. By the time she published her second novel, JUDITH MOORE: OR, FASHIONING A PIPE (1898), she was hailed by John A. Cooper, editor of CANADIAN MAGAZINE, as one of the three leading novelists in Canada, along with Gilbert Parker and Charles G.D. Roberts. Her acclaim increased when she became the first Canadian author to have a novel serialized in the CANADIAN MAGAZINE in 1898-99, and upon receiving $12.50 for each installment of "A Daughter of Witches" she became one of the magazine's best paid contributors. She also published two novellas in the New York quarterly, TALES FROM TOWN TOPICS: "A Martyr to Love" (1897) and "Where Waters Beckon" (1902). Widely travelled, Joanna E. Wood seems to have spent extensive periods in France and New York, Boston, and Philadelphia. She also visited England in 1900, developing contacts with British publishers and possibly being presented at court and meeting Algernon Charles Swinburne, who is rumoured (but was not likely) to have briefly been Joanna's fiancé. In 1907 she moved with her mother to Niagara- on-the-Lake, where she gave occasional lectures, joined the Niagara Historical Society, and associated with Janet Carnochan.* After her mother's death in 1910, Wood seems to have left Canada, travelling and living alternately with her brother, William Wood, in New York and with her sister, Jessie Wood Maxwell, in Detroit. Her last known publication was her poem, "The Man in the Ranks" in the ST. CATHARINES STANDARD sometime between 1914 and 1917. Joanna died in Detroit in 1927 after a lengthy illness; she was buried at Fairview Cemetery in Niagara Falls, Ontario. |
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| Travel | see biography |
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| Honours and awards | various unverified prizes |
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| Residences | Lesmahagow, Lanarkshire, Scotland (1867-c1869); Queenston, Niagara, Ontario (1874-c1887); New York City, New York (1887-1901); Queenston (-1906); Niagara-On-the-Lake, Ontario (1906); USA: New York and Michigan (1869-1874; c1910-1927) |
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| Geographic regions | Ontario; USA |
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| Primary genres | fiction |
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| Books | THE UNTEMPERED WIND (1894); JUDITH MOORE: OR, FASHIONING A PIPE (1898); A DAUGHTER OF WITCHES (1900); FARDEN HA' (1902) |
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| Periodicals | ALL THE YEAR ROUND; CANADIAN MAGAZINE; CHRISTMAS GLOBE; CURRENT LITERATURE; NEW ENGLAND MAGAZINE; ST. CATHARINES STANDARD; TALES FROM TOWN TOPICS |
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| Father's name | Robert Wood |
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| Life dates of father | 25 March 1821, Slamannan, Stirlingshire, Scotland - 20 December 1896, St. Catharines, Ontario; m. 1844 |
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| Father's note | farmer; with wife, founding member of Presbyterian Church in St. Davids, Ontario |
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| Mother's name | Agnes Tod |
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| Life dates of mother | 27 October 1822, Bathgate, West Lothian, Scotland - 24 February 1910, Niagara, Ontario; m. 1844 |
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| Biographical references | Dictionary of Literary Biography 92; Godard, "Wood, Joanna Ellen," DICTIONARY OF CANADIAN BIOGRAPHY XV, University of Toronto/Université Laval (Web, 2000); McMullen and MacMillan, SILENCED SEXTET (1993); 1871 Census of Canada; 1881 Census of Canada; 1891 Census of Canada; 1901 Census of Canada |
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| Bibliographic references | Watters, CHECKLIST OF CANADIAN LITERATURE...1620-1960 (1970), p. 420 |
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| Research references | complete |
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| Archival references | scrapbook, compiled by Elsie Stevens, Women's Literary Club of St. Catharines, Brock University Library, St. Catherines, Ontario; letters, William Kirby Collection, Archives of Ontario; ; letters, John Cooper fonds, North York Public Library; letters, CANADIAN MAGAZINE papers, Archives of Ontario. |
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| Image credits | Photo by Otto of Paris. Image from Henry Morgan, TYPES OF CANADIAN WOMEN (Toronto: Briggs, 1903). |
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| Unverified titles | "The Mind of a God," "The Land of Manana," |
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| Copyright | This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 4.0 International License (CC BY-NC-SA 4.0) at http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-sa/4.0/. Please cite Canada's Early Women Writers. SFU Library Digital Collections. Simon Fraser University, Burnaby, BC, Canada. 1980-2014. |
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