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Eaton, Edith

Main entryEaton, Edith
Birth placeUpton Cottage, Prestbury, Chester, Macclesfield, England
Birth date15 March 1865
Death placeMontreal, Quebec
Death date7 April 1914
Identifier0279
Birth nameEdith Maude Eaton
Alternate namesSui Sin Far, Sui Seen Far
Marital statussingle
Religious affiliationEpiscopalian
Paid workjournalist; stenographer
BiographyThe father of Edith Maude Eaton (1865-1914) was a silk merchant and portrait painter, while her mother was an English-educated Chinese woman. Born in Prestbury, Macclesfield, England, the second of 14 children, she moved with her family to the United States as an infant. The family spent a year or two in New York, where a second daughter (Grace) was born before they returned to Macclesfield. The family immigrated again in 1872 or 1873, landing in New York, but settling in Montreal, where they would reside permanently. Financial setbacks ended Edith's formal education at the age of ten. To help support the rapidly growing family, Edith made lace which she sold door-to-door, and later worked as a typographer, reporter, and stenographer. Her abilities were hindered by ill health, for rheumatic fever left her with an enlarged heart. Her first publications appeared in the DOMINION ILLUSTRATED (1888-90) and the MONTREAL DAILY WITNESS. Her first stories that concerned Chinese characters appeared in THE LOTUS and FLY LEAF, Boston literary magazines edited by Walter Blackburn Harte, who had married Edith's sister Grace. Other writers in the family included her sisters, Sara Bosse and Winnifred Eaton Babcock Reeve.* While Winnifred chose a Japanese persona ("Onoto Watanna"), most of Edith's works were published under her Chinese name, "Sui Sin (or Seen) Far." Edith's Chinese stories appeared in various North American periodicals before a selection was published as MRS. SPRING FRAGRANCE (1912). She moved to the United States in 1898, on the advice of her doctor, and shifted between Los Angeles, San Francisco (where her sister May lived), and Seattle. In 1909, she moved to Boston, where her work was published in the NEW ENGLAND MAGAZINE and the INDEPENDENT. As her health deteriorated, she returned to Montreal, where she died in 1914. MRS. SPRING FRAGRANCE AND OTHER WRITINGS, a selection of her fiction and journalism edited by Amy Ling and Annette White-Parks, was published in 1995. Along with reflecting difficulties of having to inhabit an ethnically interstitial space, Edith's work demonstrates a desire to live by the pen, sharing her experiences with a larger community. Although she was never able to earn the income necessary to survive solely from writing, her impact on Eurasian Canadians was recognized through a monument erected in her honour at Montreal's Mount Royal Cemetery, where she was buried.
ResidencesPrestbury, England (1865-c1866; c1868-1872); Hudson, New Jersey (c1866-1868); Montreal, Quebec (c1872-c1890, c1913-1914); Kingston, Jamaica (Dec 1896-May 1897); San Francisco (1898-1899); Los Angeles (1898, 1903-4); Seattle (1900-1909); Boston, Massachusetts (1909-1913)
Geographic regionsQuebec; USA
Primary genresfiction
BooksMRS. SPRING FRAGRANCE (1912); MRS SPRING FRAGRANCE AND OTHER WRITINGS (1995), eds. Ling & White-Parks
PeriodicalsAINSLEE'S; AMERICAN MOTHERHOOD; BOHEMIAN; BOSTON GLOBE; BOSTON INDEPENDENT; CANADIAN DOMINION ILLUSTRATED; CENTURY ILLUSTRATED MAGAZINE; CHAUTAUQUAN; CHICAGO EVENING POST; CHILDREN'S; CHRISTIAN EVANGELIST; DELINEATOR; DESIGNER; DETROIT FREE PRESS; DOMINION ILLUSTRATED; EVERYLAND; FLY LEAF; GALL'S DAILY NEWS LETTER; GENTLEWOMAN; GOOD HOUSEKEEPING; HAMPTON'S; HOLLAND'S; HOUSEKEEPER; LADIES' HOME JOURNAL; LAND OF SUNSHINE; LESLIE'S ILLUSTRATED WEEKLY; LITTLE FOLKS; LOS ANGELES EXPRESS; LOTUS; MONTREAL DAILY WITNESS; MONTREAL METROPOLITAN; MONTREAL STAR; NATIONAL STENOGRAPHER; NEW ENGLAND MAGAZINE; NEW IDEA; NEW YORK EVENING POST; NEW YORK INDEPENDENT; OUT WEST; OVERLAND MONTHLY; PECK'S SUN; PEOPLE'S MAGAZINE; SEATTLE POST-INTELLIGENCER; SHORT STORIES; SUNSET; TEXAS SIFTINGS; TORONTO STAR; TRAVELER; WESTERNER; WOMAN'S HOME COMPANION; WOMAN'S MAGAZINE; YOUTH'S COMPANION
Father's nameEdward C. Eaton
Life dates of father30 September 1839, Macclesfield, England - 20 February 1915, Montreal; m. 1863
Father's notebusinessman; painter (portraits)
Mother's nameGrace A. ("Lotus Blossom") Trefusis
Life dates of mother4 February 1846, China - 6 May 1922, New York; m. 1863
Mother's noteLived with Chinese circus family until the age of 9; removed from that family and supported by the missionary community until she married
Biographical referencesAnnette White-Parks, SUI SIN FAR / EDITH MAUDE EATON: A LITERARY BIOGRAPHY (Chicago: University of Illinois Press, 1995); McMullen, "Eaton, Edith Maud" DICTIONARY OF CANADIAN BIOGRAPHY XIV, University of Toronto/Universite Laval (Web, 2000); 1871 England Census; 1881 Census of Canada; 1891 Census of Canada; England & Wales, FreeBMD Birth Index, 1837-1915; Chapman, "Cross-Cultural Affinities Between Native American and White Women in 'Alaska Widow' by Edith Eaton (Sui Sin Far)" MELUS (2013), and "'Revolution in Ink': Sui Sin Far and Chinese Reform" AMERICAN QUARTERLY (Dec 2008): 975-1001.
Bibliographic referencesWatters, CHECKLIST OF CANADIAN LITERATURE...1620-1960 (1970), p. 282
Research referencescomplete
Archival referencesletters to Charles Lummis, Southwest Museum, Los Angeles; correspondence, Century Company Archives, New York Public Library.
Image creditsImage from the private collection of Diana Birchall, granddaughter of Winnifred Eaton.
CopyrightThis 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.