Isabel Stewart Way
American writer (1904–1978)
From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
Isabel E. Stewart Way (August 2, 1904 – September 23, 1978)[1] was an American writer based in Azusa, California. Her first novel was Seed of the Land (1935). She was also a playwright and wrote hundreds of pulp genre stories and novels, especially Westerns and romances.
Isabel Stewart Way | |
|---|---|
| Born | August 2, 1904 Muskegon, Michigan, US |
| Died | September 11, 1978 (aged 74) Los Angeles, California, US |
| Occupation | Writer |
| Education | Jennings Seminary, Albion College |
| Period | 1920s–1970s |
| Genre | Short story, novels, pulp romance |
| Notable works | Seed of the Land (1935) |
| Notable awards | First prize, best story published in The Echo (1927) |
| Spouse | Winfield Scott Way David J.-P. Bonnard Charles Heber Clayton Thomas Barclay Thomson |
Early life and education
Isabel Stewart Way was born in Muskegon, Michigan, the daughter of Harlow Auburn Stewart and Alice Brown Stewart.[2] Her father was a piano salesman.[3] She graduated from Jennings Seminary in Aurora, Illinois, and spent two years at Albion College in Michigan, before she withdrew from school to seek treatment for tuberculosis in warmer states.[2][4][5]
Career
Way was president of the Monrovia Writers League,[2] and a member of the San Diego Writers' Club.[4] She won the first prize for best story published in The Echo during 1927.[4] In 1930 she reported on Krishnamurti's lectures at the Ojai Star Institute for the Monrovia News-Post.[6] She was named associate editor of Creative World magazine in 1931.[7] She also taught creative writing in Monrovia.[8]
Way was also known as a dancer, actress, and playwright in Southern California.[9] She was in the cast of the first show at the Repertory Theatre in Monrovia in 1931.[10] She wrote a play, La Fiesta, that was performed in Los Angeles.[2][11] She wrote another play with WInifred Davidson.[2] In 1933, she accepted a contract to write radio scripts.[12] Her play The Blossom of Hardcrabble Flats was produced in 1949, with her daughter Eve Bonnard in the cast.[13]
Publications
Way contributed numerous articles to Saturday Evening Post, The New Yorker and other publications. She published short stories in Brief Stories, Young's, Breezy Stories, Chatelaine,[14] New York World, The Echo and others.[2][15] In 1935, her farm novel Seed of the Land (1935)[16][17][18] received strong positive reviews.[19] She wrote many pulp romances with Western themes,[20] including over a hundred stories for Rangeland Romances and Romantic Range, and a detective story for Detective Story.[21] She also wrote pulp romance novels, often with medical themes, in her later years.[22]
- "Important Things" (1931)[7]
- "Rainy Day" (1931)[7]
- Seed of the Land (1935)[18]
- The Raiders of the Lost Canyon (1937)[23]
- "The Devil Rides a Black Horse" (1938)[24]
- "Mountain Fury" (1941, with Ruby Thomson)
- "Point of Honor" (1943, with Ruby Thomson)[25]
- "By Kindness of Red" (1950)[26]
- "The Five Beautiful Smith Sisters" (1953)[14]
- Nurse in Love (1963)[22]
- Nurse Christy (1968)[27]
- Fleur Macabre (about 1968)
- The House on the Sky High Road (about 1970)
- Fighting Dr. Diana (1973)
- Calling Nurse Lorrie
Personal life and legacy
Way married four times. She married her first husband, fellow writer Winfield Scott Way in 1921, in Florida.[4] Scott Way, who was a founder of both the Pasadena Humane Society and the California Audubon Society, died in 1930.[28] She married again in August 1932, to journalist David Jean-Phillip Bonnard; he was reported dead in Russia in December 1932.[29] She had a daughter, Eve Bonnard.[16][30][31] She married her third husband, Charles Heber Clayton, in 1940.[8] In 1965 she married her fourth husband, Thomas Barclay Thomson, a fellow writer[20] and retired postmaster,[32] and widower of her co-author Ruby LaVerte Thomson.[33] Way died in 1978, at the age of 73, in Los Angeles. Her papers are in the University of Oregon Libraries.[34]
