Winnifred Eaton was born on August 21st, 1875. Her father, Edward Eaton, was a British merchant. Eaton’s mother was sold to a traveling caravan of acrobats. This caravan traveled throughout tours China, the United States, France, England, Scotland, and Ireland (Chapman and Cole 2020).
In 1855, Acheun was rescued by protestant missionaries from her abusive owner. Edward and Acheun met between 1861 and 1863 in Shanghai. They married in 1863 and quickly began having children. They lived in London before moving to New York City in 1865. They lived in New York for three years before moving back to London.
In 1873 they returned to New York again. After two years they moved to Montreal, Canada, which is where they had Winnifred Lily Eaton. She was the eighth of fourteen children, including two children who died at young ages.
At age 15, Eaton went to work as an apprentice of a dressmaker (Chapman and Cole 2020). In 1901, she married her husband Bertrand Whitcomb Babcock. Together they had four children; Perry (1903), Bertie (1904), Doris (1906), and Charley (1907). In 1916, she divorces her husband and marries Francis (Frank) Reeve in 1917.
Between 1894 and 1895, Winnifred published her first article, “A Poor Devil,” in the Metropolitan Magazine Montreal. This launched her career as an author, and she continued to publish different works from 1894 until 1937.
Some major themes within her works relate to her own life experiences as a person who comes from two different family heritages (British and Japanese). In some of her most famous works, including A Japanese Nightingale and Miss Numé of Japan, she writes about the struggles that interracial couples experience.
Not only did Eaton publish books and articles, but she also published a cookbook with the author Sarah Bosse, titled Chinese-Japanese Cookbook. In the opening lines of the cookbook, the authors state that their motivation for publishing this work: “Chinese cooking in recent years has been very popular in America, and certain Japanese dishes are also in high favor. The restaurants are no longer merely the resort of curious idlers, intent upon studying types peculiar to Chinatown, for the Chinese restaurants have pushed their way out of Chinatown and are now found in all parts of the large cities in America” (Watanna and Bosse 1914). Again, this work is largely inspired from Eaton’s background.
Another important aspect to Eaton is that, when she published her works, she often used pseudonyms. The name that she used for most frequently—roughly 128 times—was Onoto Watanna (Chapman and Cole 2020). Eaton also led a successful career working in the film industry. Between the years 1921 and 1930 she worked with Universal Studios as a screenwriter, title writer, literary advisor, and scenario editor (Chapman and Cole 2020). Later in her career, she also worked for Metro-Goldwyn Mayer and Twentieth Century Fox.
In 1935, Eaton quit her job with Universal Studios and moved back to Canada with her husband and her son, Charley. Here she published her last book Sins of Fathers in 1937. Between 1937 and 1954, Eaton spent her time working as a stenographer and traveling with her husband. In 1954, she died suddenly of a heart attack in Butte, Montana.
She lives on through the 200 some works published during her lifetime. Her and her family’s legacy lives on through the Reeve Theater at the University of Calgary.
Chapman, Mary, and Jean Lee Cole. 2020. “The Winnifred Eaton Archive.” Text. The Winnifred Eaton Archive. The Winnifred Eaton Archive. August 16, 2020. https://winnifredeatonarchive.org/index.html.
Eaton, Winnie. 1894. “A Poor Devil.” Metropolitan Magazine, 1895 1894.
Reeve, Winnifred. 1936. Sins of Fathers. Alberta: Winnifred Eaton Reeve Fonds.
Watanna, Onoto. 1899. Miss Numé of Japan. Chicago: Rand McNally.
———. 1901. A Japanese Nightingale. New York: Harper and Brothers.
Watanna, Onoto, and Sara Bosse. 1914. Chinese-Japanese Cookbook. New York: Rand McNally.
Mobirise page creator - Find out