Frona Eunice Wait (1859–1946) was an American author and newspaper writer. From her beginning as a journalist, she rose to become an associate editor for the ''

Overland Monthly The ''Overland Monthly'' was a monthly literary and cultural magazine, based in California, United States. It was founded in 1868 and published between the second half of the 19th century and the first half of the 20th century. History The '' ...

''.

Biography

Frona Eunice was born in Yolo County, California in 1859. She married John Courtland Wait at a young age in Dayton, Washington. She had two children with Wait, the second of whom, Sylvester James "Vessie" died in 1880. Her circumstances of leaving her husband are unknown but she left him after her son died. From that point she began to work as a journalist, getting her first job with the '' Santa Rosa Republican'' newspaper and learning the writing and publishing trade. In 1887 she was one of only two female staff journalists in

San Francisco San Francisco (; Spanish language, Spanish for "Francis of Assisi, Saint Francis"), officially the City and County of San Francisco, is the commercial, financial, and cultural center of Northern California. The city proper is the List of Ca ...

, working for the ''

San Francisco Examiner The ''San Francisco Examiner'' is a newspaper distributed in and around San Francisco, California, and published since 1863. Once self-dubbed the "Monarch of the Dailies" by then-owner William Randolph Hearst, and flagship of the Hearst Corporat ...

''. She married Frederick Henry Colburn, October 31, 1900. Colburn was assistant secretary of the Associated Savings Banks of San Francisco, and had spent time in a variety of businesses including publishing, import and export, and being president of the California Business College.

''Overland Monthly''

Before editing the ''Overland Monthly'', she contributed articles to it, and wrote books such as the futuristic ''Yermah the Dorado'', published by W. Doxey in 1897 and republished by Alice Harriman in 1913. She wrote

anti-suffrage Anti-suffragism was a political movement composed of both men and women that began in the late 19th century in order to campaign against women's suffrage in countries such as Australia, Canada, Ireland, the United Kingdom and the United States. To ...

political pamphlets, including ''80 per cent. of the women in California do not want the vote''. She is also known in wine circles for her works on California wines. Her book ''Wines and Vines of California'' was called an "unquestionable cornerstone of California wine literature" in Wayward Tendrils Quarterly (published for a wine book collector's society), July 2011. She joined the staff of the ''Overland Monthly'' in November 1923 and rose to become an associate editor. She had been working in publishing, writing and journalism for 36 years, having gotten her start in 1887. As associate editor, she continued to write. In a sampling of the 1928 issues (Volume 86, numbers 1 through 8), she wrote a short story,, two non-fiction essays,,, an obituary,, and several book reviews. She was also the subject of a poem by

Ambrose Bierce Ambrose Gwinnett Bierce (June 24, 1842 – ) was an American short story writer, journalist, poet, and American Civil War veteran. His book ''The Devil's Dictionary'' was named as one of "The 100 Greatest Masterpieces of American Literature" by t ...

entitled ''A Competitor'', published in his book ''The Collected Works of Ambrose Bierce''. She died in 1946.

Science fiction

Although most of her books fall firmly into such non-fiction areas as wine tasting and history, Wait did write one book that is often sold as an early work of

science fiction Science fiction (sometimes shortened to Sci-Fi or SF) is a genre of speculative fiction which typically deals with imaginative and futuristic concepts such as advanced science and technology, space exploration, time travel, parallel unive ...

. ''Yermah the Dorado'' is an adventure story about an Atlantis, in a place that will become San Francisco 11,000 years later. She published the book originally in 1897. After seeing the effects of the

1906 San Francisco earthquake At 05:12 Pacific Standard Time on Wednesday, April 18, 1906, the coast of Northern California was struck by a major earthquake with an estimated moment magnitude of 7.9 and a maximum Mercalli intensity of XI (''Extreme''). High-intensity sha ...

she made changes to the book. In her reprint of the book, the author called her book ''Yermah the Dorado'' a "pre-vision of what is to be". Though sold as science fiction, there has been an argument about whether many Victorian era books meet the definition of science fiction.

Darko Suvin Darko Ronald Suvin (born Darko Šlesinger) is a Yugoslavia, Yugoslav-born academic, writer and critic who became a professor (now emeritusDavid JohnstonConvocation: Honorary degrees and emeritus professorships McGill Reporter, Volume 33, No. 05, ...

argues that the book is not science fiction because it lacks a distinct science-fiction narrative throughout the book.

Writings

Books

*''The Kingship of Mt. Lassen, at Present the Only Active Volcano on the Mainland of the United States, in the Past California's Greatest Benefactor'', Nemo Publishing Company, San Francisco 1922
''The Stories of El Dorado'', 1904
*''Yermah the Dorado: The Story of a Lost Race'', W. Doxey, San Francisco, 1897 and Alice Harriman Company, New York, 1913 *''Wines & Vines of California; Or, a Treatise on the Ethics of Wine Drinking'', 1889 *''In Old Vintage Days ... With Decorations by Dorothy Payne'', John Henry Nash, San Francisco, 1937 *''Wines of Valencia''

Pamphlets, articles and other works

''My Cousin's Wedding Dress'', ''Overland monthly and Out West magazine'',Volume: 18, Issue: 107, Nov 1891, pp. 535-542.''Where beauty reigns:Mrs. Smith's Gala Society Ball at the Portland Hotel'', undated newspaper.''An interesting and authentic description of a mule-back ride through the quaint, little-known department of Soconusco, Mexico'', by Fredrick Henry Colburn and Frona Eunice Wait, 1901.''John Henry Nash, Master Printer'', ''Out West magazine'', 1929.The Romance of a Paper Man and a Marble Woman by Frona Eunice Wait Colburn, ''Overland Monthly'', November and December, 1930.Online text, ''Overland Magazine'', volume 86, has several articles by Frona Eunice Wait Colburn.

References

External links

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Frona and winemaking, has link to biography by John Maher
{{DEFAULTSORT:Wait, Frona Eunice 1859 births 1946 deaths 20th-century American novelists American magazine editors American science fiction writers Writers from the San Francisco Bay Area American women journalists Women science fiction and fantasy writers American women novelists People from Woodland, California Novelists from California Women magazine editors 20th-century American women writers