View source for Edith Summers Kelley

'''Edith Summers Kelley''' (April 28, 1884 – June 9, 1956) was a Canadian-born author who lived and worked in the United States, and is best known for her 1923 novel ''[[s:Weeds (Kelley)|Weeds]]'', set in the hills of [[Kentucky]].<ref name=here>{{cite book|last=Ballard|first=Sandra|title=Listen Here: Women Writing in Appalachia|year=2003|publisher=UP of Kentucky|location=Lexington, KY|isbn=978-0-8131-9066-2|pages=319–20|url=https://books.google.com/books?id=i090MbNYlIYC&pg=PA319}}</ref>

Kelley was born in [[Toronto|Toronto, Ontario]], Canada, to Scottish immigrants<ref name=here/> and graduated from the [[University of Toronto]] before moving to [[Greenwich Village]] where she met [[Upton Sinclair]], who offered her a job at [[Helicon Home Colony]]. At the colony she met [[Sinclair Lewis]]. They were engaged for two years, but she married his roommate, a poet and novelist named [[Allan Eugene Updegraff|Allan Updegraff]]. Kelley taught night school to support Updegraff and their two children. After they divorced, she became involved with Fred Kelley, an artist, moved around the country with him and had another child.<ref name="showalter"/> 

''Weeds'' was conceived while she and Fred Kelley lived on a tobacco farm in [[Scott County, Kentucky]].<ref name="here" /> It had some positive reviews but no commercial success; a second novel, ''The Devil's Hand'', written while she and Kelley lived in [[Imperial Valley (California)|Imperial Valley]], [[California]], was left unfinished, and was not printed until 1974.<ref name="showalter">{{cite book|last=Showalter|first=Elaine|authorlink=Elaine Showalter|title=A jury of her peers: American women writers from Anne Bradstreet to Annie Proulx|url=https://books.google.com/books?id=ukFn1oFvCkAC&pg=PT370|year=2009|publisher=Random House|isbn=978-1-4000-4123-7|pages=370–71}}</ref>

==References==
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==External links==
*{{commonscat-inline}}
* {{Wikisource author-inline}}
* {{Gutenberg | no=61201 | name=Weeds}} 
* [https://www.poetryfoundation.org/poetrymagazine/browse?contentId=19022 A Rich Woman] (1930) at [[Poetry Foundation]]


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[[Category:1884 births]]
[[Category:1956 deaths]]
[[Category:20th-century Canadian novelists]]
[[Category:20th-century Canadian women writers]]
[[Category:Canadian women novelists]]
[[Category:People from Old Toronto]]
[[Category:Canadian emigrants to the United States]]


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