Edith Summers Kelley
Edith Summers Kelley was a Canadian-born author recognized for her poignant portrayals of rural life and the struggles of agricultural workers in early 20th-century California, drawing comparisons to notable writer John Steinbeck. Born in 1884 to Scottish immigrants, she graduated from the University of Toronto and later engaged with prominent literary figures in the United States, including Upton Sinclair. Kelley's personal experiences, particularly her time managing a Kentucky tobacco farm, inspired her renowned novel *Weeds*, published in 1923. Despite receiving acclaim from influential contemporaries, *Weeds* struggled to maintain commercial success and fell into obscurity after Kelley's death in 1956. Her second novel, *The Devil's Hand*, was published posthumously in 1974 and further explores themes of survival in the farming industry. Kelley's work has seen renewed interest, particularly since the reissue of *Weeds* by a feminist press in 1982, marking her significance in American literature and the exploration of women's experiences in challenging environments.
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Subject Terms
Edith Summers Kelley
Writer
- Born: April 28, 1884
- Birthplace: Ontario, Canada
- Died: June 9, 1956
- Place of death: Los Gatos, California
Biography
Edith Summers Kelley has been compared to John Steinbeck for her portraits of the desperation of rural workers in California and the oppressiveness of farm life in the early decades of the twentieth century. Kelley’s name and work were largely forgotten until Matthew Bruccoli rediscovered her novel Weeds in the early 1970’s and published it in the Southern Illinois University series Lost American Fiction.
Kelley was born Edith Summers in Ontario, Canada, in 1884, to Scottish immigrants. She graduated from the University of Toronto in 1903. She migrated to New York City and was associated with Upton Sinclair and other literary figures at Sinclair’s communal experiment, Helicon Hall, in New Jersey. For a decade in the early 1900’s, she lived in the artistically and intellectually stimulating world of Manhattan. She nearly married writer Sinclair Lewis and was acquainted with the radical thinker and dramatist Susan Glaspell.
In 1908, she married a resident of Helicon Hall, Allan Updegraff. They had two children but the marriage did not last long. She found a longtime companion in the sculptor Fred Kelley, with whom she attempted the management of a Kentucky tobacco farm around 1914. This overwhelming experience became the raw material for her great novel, Weeds (1923). The realistic novel had the ironic fate of being highly recommended by literary figures like Lewis and Sinclair (whose efforts as late as 1941 to have it republished failed), while it was unable to sustain a level of sales that would keep it in print. Kelley’s protagonist in Weeds, Judith Pippinger Blackford, stands with other great figures in American naturalistic fiction; she is conscious of life in a way others around her are not, yet she possesses a vision of life’s actualities rare in American literature.
Kelley’s second novel, The Devil’s Hand, was published posthumously in 1974. It depicts the efforts of a young Easterner, Rhoda Malone, to survive and succeed in the farming world of southern California. The work reflects the Kelleys’ attempt to work an alfalfa farm, a venture which failed in 1923. Kelley died in 1956. Weeds was reissued by a feminist press in 1982 and continues to attract scholarly interest.