Edith Summers Kelley

Born in Toronto on April 28, 1884, to Scottish immigrant parents, she graduated from the University of Toronto before moving to New York and beginning a literary life in Greenwich Village. Early on, she was connected with Upton Sinclair and worked at his Helicon Home Colony, an experience that placed her close to reform-minded literary circles.

Her most famous book, Weeds (1923), grew out of years spent in Kentucky, where she and C. Fred Kelley worked as tenant farmers on a tobacco farm. That novel is now remembered for its vivid picture of rural labor, family strain, and the limited choices facing women, all written with a sharp eye for everyday detail.

Kelley later lived and worked in California as well, and she died on June 9, 1956. Although her writing was largely neglected for many years after her death, Weeds was rediscovered in the 1970s and has since earned a lasting reputation as a powerful, overlooked American novel.