Women Writers of the American West, 1833-1927

12. The Authors

12 The Authors For some of these women authors there’s substantial biographical and critical literature, for others not even dates are currently available; occasional allusions in the authors’ books are sometimes the only informational source. The capsule biographies below are synthesized from a range of sources and are inevitably incomplete. Annie Heloise Abel (later Henderson). 1873–1 947. English-born, emigrated with her parents to Kansas when she was 11,graduated from the University of Kansas, got a Ph.D. in history from Yale in 1905,taught at various colleges, lived in Australia 1922–23(the year she was married to an Australian). Retired to the state of Washington. Her three-volume history of the slaveholding Indians appeared between 1915 and 1925. Emma H. Adams. 1827?–1 917. Originally from Cleveland; published travel letters in a Cleveland newspaper about California, the Pacific Coast, the Southwest , the far north (1887, 1888);also doctrinal biographies for children (Martin Luther, Savonarola, John of Wycliffe) and didactic children’s stories. Buried in Inglewood, California. EdnahRobinsonAiken. 1872–1 960. Novelist,journalist,playwright,clubwoman, she lived in San Francisco; married Charles Sedgwick Aiken (1863–1 911),editor of the Southern Pacific Railroad’s Sunset magazine. Her 1911novel ἀ e River is set in California’s Imperial Valley. In 1919 she was working as an educational assistant for the California Naturalization and Education Association. Bess Streeter Aldrich. 1881–1 954.From Cedar Falls, Iowa; graduated from Iowa State Normal School 1901;taught for four years; married and moved to Elmwood , Nebraska, where her husband went into banking and died suddenly in 1925. Had won a short story contest, now wrote to support herself and four children, becoming one of the best-paid magazine writers of her time. Almost 200 stories and nine novels, mostly about small town Nebraska life. Biographies by Abigail Ann Martin (1992) and Carol Miles Peterson (1995). Emma S(arah) Allen. 1859–?. Originally from Indiana; attended California schools in Marysville and Modesto; taught in several California towns; married James Monroe Allen in 1882;published in eastern denominational journals; set several novels in northern California. Margaret V. Allen. ?–?. Secretary, then president of the San Diego Pioneer Society (1916); the 64-page Ramona’s Homeland (1914) her only book. Ada Woodruἀ Anderson. 1861–1 956. Born in San Francisco; her widowed mother took her and her sister to the Puget Sound region around 1865. She taught at the Yelm County school (basis for her first novel); married Oliver Phelps Anderson (1869–1941),a prominent Seattle businessman whose father was a president of the University of Washington; they lived on Mercer Island outside Seattle. She published in magazines; three regional novels (1908, 1909, 1915) about the Pacific Northwest. Mabel Washbourne Anderson. 1863–1949. Cherokee; paternal grandfather founded the Dwight Mission; maternal grandfather was John Ridge, leader of the Removal-accepting Treaty Party. Graduated from the Cherokee Female Seminary in 1883,became a teacher and speaker, married in 1891;published in local, Indian Territory, and Oklahoma magazines and newspapers. Published a biography of Confederate General Stand Watie (grandfather’s cousin) in 1915, expanded in 1931. Kate Adele Aplington. 1859–1928. Moved with her husband from Illinois to Kansas in 1880.A painter and photographer, also clubwoman, suffragist, and lecturer, she founded the Kansas State Traveling Art Gallery in 1900; died in Miami, Florida; published a Santa Fe trail novel, Pilgrims of the Plains (1913). Anna E. Arnold. 1879–1942. Native Kansan; school teacher and administrator who published two text books about Kansas (1912,1915); moved to Portland, Oregon, in 1917 as principal of Girls Polytechnic. Gertrude Franklin Horne Atherton. 1857–1948.Born in San Francisco, grew up with her mother in a boarding house; married unhappily into a mixed AngloCalifornio family, had a daughter; was widowed early. Ambitious and prolific, she specialized at first in California subjects, especially San Francisco; moved later to NYC, traveled widely, wrote less about California. Memoir published in 1932; biography by Emily Wortis Leider (1991). 266 . chapter 12 Mary Hunter Austin. 1868–1934. Illinois native from Carlinville; graduated from Blackburn College; moved to the San Joaquin Valley with her mother and brother at age 20. Married Wallace Austin in 1891;moved to the Owens Valley where she taught, he worked on irrigation projects. Left the desert and her husband after publishing Land of Little Rain in 1903(they eventually divorced); institutionalized her severely autistic daughter. Lived in Carmel, NYC, Europe, retired...