I tried to track down some info on Edna Kenton, but there’s no wikipedia page about her.

There’s a very short bio – three paragraphs – in Anne Innis Dagg’s The Feminine Gaze: a Canadian Compendium of Non-Fiction Women Authors and their Books 1836-1945, and the first paragraph goes like this

Kenton, Edna 1876-1954. Edna Kenton is known best for her editing the Jesuit Relations and Allied Documents (Relations dej jésuites), voluminous annual reports describing all manner of conditions and experiences sent home in the 1660s to France by priests of the Society of Jesus stationed in Canada. She never married.

OK, maybe it’s just me, but that last line kills me, really.

So, why looking into the life of an unmarried woman (gasp!) editing Jesuit letters?

Because Edna Kenton wrote The Book of Earths. Continue reading →