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The sisters Edith and Winnifred Eaton made every effort, throughout their lives, to be heard. Twenty years ago, despite Edith's years of steady labor as a journalist and short story writer and despite Winnifred's widely popular novels, they were virtually forgotten. Today, through the work of an extended and continuing network of researchers, both their biographies and many of the literary works they published - under various names, but most recognizably as Sui Sin Far and Onoto Watanna - have been recovered and have become part of literary and cultural history.
This republication of Sui Sin Far's "The Son of Chung Wo," which originally appeared in the 16 June 1910 issue of Leslie's Weekly, is a small contribution to that project. In this introduction, I offer a brief sketch of what we know about the Eaton sisters and some reflections on this critical history, and make some preliminary comments on the story itself. Most immediately, this newly discovered tale gives us for the first time some evidence that can plausibly be interpreted as indicating Edith's reaction to her sister's career. Most broadly, it demonstrates how much more we have to learn about - and from - this author and how intimately archival and interpretive work depend on each other.
Edith Maude Eaton was born in 1865, in Macclesfield in the English Midlands, the second child of an English father and a Chinese mother. Edward Eaton belonged to a silk manufacturing family. Grace Trefusis was the adopted daughter of English missionaries and had been educated in England; she returned to China probably as a missionary herself. They were married in Shanghai while Edward was there on business, and Edith's older brother was born in China. The family's third child was born in Jersey City, after the Eatons had immigrated to the United States. Subsequently, they returned to England for some years, then moved to Canada, settling in Montreal in about 1873. Winnifred Eaton was born there in 1874, the eighth child of an eventual fourteen (of whom twelve survived). This story already begins to suggest the complexity of the family's national and ethnic affiliations. At different moments, various Eaton children presented themselves as white, Eurasian, Chinese American (a term Edith seems to have invented), English, Spanish...