1000's more vintage prints available - CLICK HERE Visit our main site at http://www.jnniepce.com/ Colour lithograph poster for Klaw & Erlanger's production of "A Japanese nightingale", adapted from the novel by Winnifred Eaton (a.k.a. Onoto Watanna, 1875-1954) by William Young (1847-1920), at the Daly's Theatre, New York. Winnifred Eaton, (August 21, 1875 in Montreal, Quebec, Canada - April 8, 1954 in Butte, Montana, United States) was a Canadian author. Although she was of Chinese-British ancestry, she published under the Japanese pseudonym, Onoto Watanna. Winnifred Eaton was only fourteen years old when one of her stories was accepted for publication by a Montreal newspaper that had already published pieces by her sister. Before long she also had articles published in several popular magazines in the United States, notably the Ladies' Home Journal. Poster for Klaw & Erlanger's production of A Japanese Nightingale in New York in 1903 She left home at the age of seventeen to take a job as a stenographer for a Canadian newspaper in Kingston, Jamaica. She remained there for a year, then moved to Chicago, Illinois where for a time she worked as a typist while continuing to write short stories. Eventually, her compositions were accepted by the prestigious Saturday Evening Post as well as by other popular periodicals. She moved from this to writing novels, capitalising on her mixed ancestry to pass herself off as a Japanese American by the name of "Onoto Watanna" (which sounds Japanese but is not Japanese at all). Under this pseudonym she published romance novels and short stories that were widely read throughout the United States. In 1900, she moved to New York City, where her second major novel, A Japanese Nightingale, was published. It proved extremely successful, being translated into several languages and eventually adapted both as a Broadway play and then, in 1919, as a motion picture. Her novel Tama (1910) was a runaway bestseller and her novel Me, A Book of Remembrance, a thinly disguised memoir, told a titillating tale of a woman's infidelities. While living in New York Winnifred Eaton met and married Bertrand Babcock, with whom she had four children (three sons and a daughter). The marriage ended in divorce, and in 1917 she married Francis Reeve. Moving to Calgary, Alberta in her native Canada, she continued to produce more successful novels until she returned to New York in 1924 to write screenplays for the burgeoning film industry. In 1932, she returned to Calgary, where she became an active member of the artistic community, founding the Little Theatre movement and serving as the president of the Calgary branch of the Canadian Authors' Association. In 1954, while returning home from a vacation in California, Winnifred Eaton fell ill and died of heart failure in Butte, Montana. Following her death, her husband donated funds to build the Reeve Theatre at the University of Calgary. A collection of her works is maintained at the Glenbow Archives in Calgary. Description Source Wikipedia