Theda Kenyon
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Theda Kenyon | |
|---|---|
 Theda Kenyon, from a portrait by Stanislav Rembski | |
| Born | September 19, 1894 New York U.S. |
| Died | November 16, 1997 (age 103) Montclair, New Jersey, U.S. |
| Occupations | Writer, educator |
Theda Kenyon (September 19, 1894 – November 16, 1997) was an American writer and educator. She wrote novels, poetry, short stories, a play, song lyrics, and a book on witchcraft, Witches Still Live: A Study of the Black Art Today (1929).[1]
Kenyon was from Brooklyn, New York, the daughter of theologian and Protestant Episcopal pastor Ralph Wood Kenyon and Elise Chesebrough Rathbun Kenyon.[2][3] She graduated from Packer Collegiate Institute.[4]
Career
Kenyon taught poetry classes at Hunter College.[5] She held a residency at the MacDowell Colony in 1928.[6] She was a member of the executive board of the Poetry Society of America, and an early promoter of the poet James Still,[7] who was once her student.[8] She gave poetry readings,[9] sometimes in historical costumes,[10][11] and was poetry chair of the New York City Federation of Women's Clubs.[12] Brooklyn painter Stanislav Rembski painted her portrait in the 1920s.[13]
Most of Kenyon's novels were historical in setting, and several were based on biographies of historical figures, including Joan of Arc,[14] Anne Hutchinson,[5] and Richard Fanning Loper.[15] In 1941, she performed a dramatic version of her novel-in-verse, Scarlet Anne, for a women's club in Virginia.[5] She was guest of honor at a 1963 meeting of the Pen Women of Atlantic City.[16]
Publications
Poetry
- "Tipperary Comes to Bagdad" (1917, Everybody's)[3]
- "Beyond the Well" (1917, Munsey's)[3]
- "The Hooverish Child" (1918, All-Story Weekly)[17]
- "The Vestment Maker" (1919, Scribner's)[18]
- "Out of the Desert" (1921, North American Review)[19]
- "Pan Adolescent" (1923, North American Review)[20]
- "Leah" (1924, North American Review)[21]
- "The Ship Model" (1924)[4]
- "Service", "A Valentine", and "For a Library Door" (1925, Everybody's)[22][23][24]
- "Three Poems" (1925, Contemporary Verse)[25]
- "Dead Letters" (1928, North American Review)[26]
- "Widowhood" (1930, North American Review)[27]
- "I Pray" (1931, North American Review)[28]
Fiction
- "The Passing of Sarah" (1924, AInslee's)[4]
- "The Gay Tyrant" (1925, McCall's)[29]
- Certain Ladies (1930)[30]
- "The House of the Golden Eyes" (1930, story, Weird Tales)
- Scarlet Anne (1939, a novel in verse, based on the life of Anne Hutchinson)[30][31]
- Pendulum (1942, historical novel)[32]
- The Golden Feather (1943, historical novel)[33]
- Black Dawn (1944, a sequel to Golden Feather)[34][35]
- The Skipper from Stonington (1947, novel based on the life of Richard Fanning Loper)[15][36]
- Something Gleamed (1948, historical novel)[37][38]
- Jeanne (1928, novel about Joan of Arc)[14]
