Evelyn Eaton
Evelyn Sybil Mary Eaton (1902-1983) was a multifaceted writer, translator, and cultural advocate, known for her contributions to literature and her engagement with Native American themes. Born in Montreux, Switzerland, she was raised in multiple countries and received her education at prestigious institutions like the Sorbonne. Eaton began her writing career in the early 1920s, publishing poetry and novels, including her notable work, "Quietly My Captain Waits," which was translated into seventeen languages. After immigrating to the United States in 1937, she continued her literary pursuits and worked as a war correspondent during World War II.
Eaton's legacy is marked by her exploration of Micmac and Malisite heritage and her promotion of Native American arts, leading to her recognition as a Paiute Pipe-Woman. In her later years, she founded the Deepest Valley Theater in California and established the Draco Foundation to preserve musical traditions. Despite her prolific output, much of her work has fallen out of print, though some of her writings on spirituality have garnered renewed interest posthumously. Her life reflects a deep commitment to both cultural exploration and the arts.
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Subject Terms
Evelyn Eaton
Writer
- Born: December 22, 1902
- Birthplace: Montreux, Switzerland
- Died: July 18, 1983
- Place of death: Independence, California
Biography
Evelyn Sybil Mary Eaton was born on December 22, 1902, in Montreux, Switzerland. Her father was Daniel Isaac Vernon Eaton, a colonel in the Royal Canadian Horse Artillery, and her mother was Myra Randolph Eaton. Eaton was raised in Switzerland, England, and Canada, and she studied at the Sorbonne, University of Paris, from 1920 to 1921 before enrolling in Mrs. Hosler’s Secretarial School for Gentlewomen.
For a few years she worked as a secretary, and in 1923 she became a translator in London. That same year she published two books of poetry. Her first novel, The Encircling Mist, was published in 1925, when she was working in Paris for the Paramount Film Company. She married Ernst Paul Richard Viedt in 1928, and the couple had one daughter, Theresa Neyana, before immigrating to the United States in 1937.
Through the 1930’s and the early 1940’s, Eaton published several historical novels and worked for a literary agent in New York City. These novels were popular; one of them, Quietly My Captain Waits, was translated into seventeen languages. Ernst died in 1942, and Eaton became a naturalized citizen of the United States in 1944. In 1945, she worked as a war correspondent in the China-Burma-India Theater, traveling more than 33,000 miles by plane and jeep.
Upon her return, she began a new career teaching English literature as a visiting lecturer or writer-in-residence at prestigious colleges and universities. Between 1946 and 1960, she published twenty-five stories in The New Yorker, continued to write poetry and novels, and produced radio programs and audio cassettes about poetry and the arts. In all, she published some twenty-five books of poetry, fiction, and nonfiction, and dozens of stories and reviews in important periodicals.
Eaton’s ancestry included connections with the Micmac and Malisite people of Nova Scotia, and she examined Native American motifs in her novels and in nonfiction books and promoted Native American arts. In 1963, when she was sixty-one, she moved to a small miner’s hut with no electricity or running water in Owen’s Valley, California. In 1965, she established the Deepest Valley Theater, a natural amphitheater which she discovered on a hike through Owen’s Valley, and adapted it for concerts. That same year she founded the Draco Foundation to record and preserve music performed at the theater. She established ties with local Arapahoe and Paiute Indians and was eventually named a Paiute Pipe-Woman, a rare honor for a woman.
Eaton described her education in Paiute spirituality in I Send a Voice. Eaton died in Independence, California, on July 18, 1983. Little of the work for which Eaton was best known during her lifetime remains in print. A selection of her novels dealing with Nova Scotian history, including Quietly My Captain Waits and Restless Are the Sails, were reissued in the early twenty-first century but quickly went out of print. Her books about religion and spirituality, including The Shaman and the Medicine Wheel, found new audiences after her death.