Evelyn Eaton

Evelyn Sybil Mary Eaton (1902–1983) was a Canadian novelist, short-story writer, poet and academic known for her early novels set in New France, and later writings which explored the spirituality of the western Amerindian peoples.

Born in Montreux, Switzerland, she was the daughter of Canadians and was educated at the Netherwood School in Rothesay, New Brunswick, Heathfield School in Ascot, England, and at The Sorbonne in Paris, She rejected many of the social conventions of her time and class, giving birth out of wedlock to a daughter while at The Sorbonne. She wrote poetry from an early age, publishing the first, 'The Interpreter', in 1923 but in 1940, the publication of 'Quietly My Captain Waits', a novel set in Acadia (now Nova Scotia) in the early days of French settlement (New France), brought her commercial success. She became an American citizen in 1945. A series of novels set in New France followed, as did a teaching appointment at Columbia University from 1949–1951, a Visiting Lecturership at Sweet Briar College, Virginia from 1951–1960, and a position as Writer in Residence with the Huntingdon Hartford Foundation in 1960 and 1962.

In the 1950s she began to explore Native American spirituality. A series of short stories published in the New Yorker, four more novels, a volume of poetry, and a Ballet-oratorio would grow out of Eaton's continuing adoption of Native American spiritual practices. In 1966, the Evelyn Sybil Mary Eaton Collection, a repository for her books, manuscripts, and personal papers, was established in the Mugar Memorial Library at Boston University.