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This realistic second novel by the author of Weeds depi...)
This realistic second novel by the author of Weeds depicts the struggle for survival of two unmarried women in California’s Imperial Valley in the 1920s.
In her lifetime, Edith Summers Kelley had one novel published, the recently rediscovered Weeds, first published in 1923. Fifty years later this remarkable novel was republished and was, belatedly, recognized as a lost masterpiece,” a major work of American fiction.” Following the republication of Weeds, the manuscript for this previously unpublished novel, The Devil’s Hand, was found among his mother’s papers by Patrick Kelley, who has written an appended memoir.
In this second novel, according to Matthew J. Bruccoli, Edith Summers Kelley again proves herself to be a superior writer of realistic fiction.
The story is about fragile and dreamy, romantically unfulfilled Rhoda Malone and her stalwart and forthright friend Kate Baxter who, enjoying the emancipation of women after World War I, leave Philadelphia and the monotony of office jobs to become farmers. In California’s Imperial Valley, among Japanese, Hindus, Mexicans, and a scattering of Americans, the two women become trapped in the struggle for survival.
Like Weeds, The Devil’s Hand, has strength, fine emotional control, and is also an important sociological novel. Readers who hailed the rediscovery of Weeds will welcome this impressive recovered novel.
Edith Summers Kelley was a Canadian author. She was a secretary of Upton Sinclair at Princeton University and his Helicon Home Colony.
Background
Edith Summers Kelley was born on April 28, 1884 in Toronto, Canada, the daughter of George Summerss and Isabella Johnstone, Scottish immigrants. Her father owned a shingle mill. At the age of thirteen, she sold her first manuscript to a local newspaper; by her own admission this was the greatest literary thrill of her life.
Education
Kelley attended the University of Toronto on scholarship, winning honors in language study, and was graduated in 1903.
Career
About 1903 Summers moved to New York, where she worked on Funk and Wagnall's Standard Dictionary. From doing much close work, she incurred eyestrain which plagued her for the rest of her life. She also did free-lance writing. In 1906-1907 she became Upton Sinclair's secretary, working for him at Princeton and, later, at Helicon Hall, in Englewood, New Jersey. Helicon Hall, an experiment in cooperative group living, was founded by Sinclair in 1906. Summers was exposed there to radical opinions that were to influence her novels, especially The Devil's Hand. About 1915 she moved to Greenwich Village. She wrote short stories and worked as a teacher to support herself-"stuff that I am not proud of, frothy and inconsequential. " Later she wandered all over the United States, searching for an answer to her financial problems. From 1914 to 1916 she tried with her long-time partner C. Frederick Kelley tobacco farming in Kentucky. From this experience Kelley amassed the background for her magnum opus, Weeds.
From 1916 to 1920 she and Frederick ran a boardinghouse in Stillwater, New Jersey. In 1920 they moved to a sixty-acre alfalfa farm in the Imperial Valley of California, close to the Mexican border. Their stay was "long enough to get us cleaned out of everything we had, " Kelley recalled. Material for her second book, The Devil's Hand, was gathered during this period. The next stop was a northern section of San Diego, on a chicken ranch. There, under the most adverse conditions, Kelley wrote Weeds, which was published in 1923. In spite of generally favorable reviews, the novel was a commercial failure. After having offered to edit the book, Sinclair Lewis promoted it vigorously. Nothing saved it from oblivion during Kelley's lifetime.
Weeds portrays the life of a Kentucky farming couple during the early twentieth century. The main character is Judith Blackford, a simple, untutored, high-spirited and beautiful girl, innately superior to her wretched lot, who eventually succumbs to the monstrous brutality of farm life. The story is forceful and realistic, as well as naturalistic. Weeds is a minor masterpiece of twentieth-century fiction. As early as 1925, Kelley had completed nine chapters of The Devil's Hand, but it was not published during her lifetime. During the Great Depression the family suffered greatly. In 1937 Kelley worked for a time as a charwoman. In 1946 she moved to Los Gatos, California, where she died, ten years later, almost unknown.
In 1972, through the efforts of Matthew J. Bruccoli, the Southern Illinois University Press republished Weeds as part of its Lost American Fiction series. Using a manuscript obtained from Kelley's son Patrick, Bruccoli published The Devil's Hand in 1974. It proved to be a readable tale about agricultural hardship in the Imperial Valley during the early twentieth century. Although Kelley's social criticism is dated, the book offers a compassionate picture of an emotionally strained partnership of two independent, "new-type" women, Rhoda Malone and Kate Baxter. The main character is Rhoda, a Philadelphia office worker, who evolves into a hardy farmer with a deep feeling of sympathy for the valley underdogs--the Hindus, Mexicans, and Chinese. She has to choose between an unrewarding unmarried life as a farmer and a comfortable, safe marriage to a member of the Establishment. She opts for the latter. As a result of the publication of The Devil's Hand and the reprinting of Weeds, Kelley's literary reputation is on the rise.
Upton Sinclair described Summers as a "golden-haired and shrewdly observant young person whose gentle voice and unassuming ways gave us no idea of her talent. "
Connections
At the Helicon Hall colony Edith Summers met Sinclair Lewis. He fell in love with Summers, and they became engaged. In the spring of 1907, Lewis suggested that they marry the following September, but for some reason the engagement was broken. At Summers' request he burned all of her letters to him. In January 1908 she married Allan Updegraff, another resident of Helicon Hall. They had two children. They had two children. Shortly after their marriage Updegraff lost his editorial position with Transatlantic Tales and the couple lived on Summers' salary as a teacher. They separated about 1915. Later in Greenwich Village, she met C. Frederick Kelley, an artist. Although never formally married, she used his surname. They lived together for some forty years. They had one son.