AUTHORS

Edith Maude Eaton, one of the first Asian American authors to publish fiction in the United States, strategically deployed multiple pseudonyms. Writing under names like Wing Sing—a male Chinese American traveler of the American railways—or Fire Fly during her journalistic tenure in Kingston, Jamaica, Eaton used multiple identities to navigate her career within the publishing landscape and to champion social causes. She even wrote as E.E. to protest a proposed increase in head taxes on Chinese immigrants in Canada in 1896.

 

Released in 1912, Mrs. Spring Fragrance is the compiled treasure trove of short stories that solidified Eaton’s literary legacy under her most used pen name, Sui Sin Far. In her book’s Acknowledgement, she thanks the multitude of magazines and newspapers that originally published the individual stories over the years. This landmark collection includes seventeen mature narratives and, in the second part, twenty heartfelt "Tales for Chinese Children", making it a vital compilation of her pioneering work.