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Frona Eunice Wait Colburn
Born	Eunice Sophronia "Frona" Smith 19 Aug 1859 Woodland, Yolo County, California
Died	1946
Occupation	Author
Language	English
Nationality	American
Genre	Journalism, Science Fiction, Geological History, California, Wine, Women's newspaper topics
Notable works	Yermah the Dorado Wines and Vines of California
Spouse	John Courtland Wait (married 3 August 1875 in Dayton, Washington. Divorced) Frederick Henry Colburn (married 31 October 1900)
Children	Myretta "Etta" Smith (born c. 1875) Sylvester "Vessie" James Smith (born August 1879, died 18 October 1880)

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

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, working for the San Francisco Examiner. 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 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 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. 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 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 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

1. ^ John Maher. "Frona Eunice Wait (Smith Colburn) — "herculean deeds of worthwhile achievement"" (PDF). Retrieved 2012-02-12.
2. Overland monthly and, Out West magazine, Volume 89, No. 6, June 1931. p. 26.
3. ^ Lewis Francis Byington. "San Francisco County Biographies". Archived from the original on 2015-10-20. Retrieved 2012-02-12.
4. Wait, Frona Eunice (1915). 80 per cent. of the women in California do not want the vote. Pennsylvania Association Opposed to Woman Suffrage.
5. Maher, John (2011). Frona Eunice Wait (Smith Colburn): "Herculean Deeds of Worthwhile Achievement". Wayward Tendrils Quarterly Volume 21, No.3. p. 1.
6. Colburn, Frona Eunice Wait (November 1923), "Getting on the Staff", Overland Monthly, Volume 81, No. 7, p. 3, retrieved 2012-02-13,
7. Colburn, Frona Eunice Wait (1928), "The Kelp Girl", Overland Monthly, Volume 86, No. 2, p. 43, retrieved 2012-02-13,
8. Colburn, Frona Eunice Wait (1928), "What Constitutes the Fine Art of Bookmaking?", Overland Monthly, Volume 86, No. 2, p. 83, retrieved 2012-02-13,
9. Colburn, Frona Eunice Wait (1928), "The New Overland Trail", Overland Monthly, Volume 86, No. 2, p. 243, retrieved 2012-02-13,
10. Colburn, Frona Eunice Wait (1928), "The Passing of Ina Coolbrith", Overland Monthly, Volume 86, No. 2, p. 106, retrieved 2012-02-13,
11. Bierce, Ambrose (1911). The Collected Works of Ambrose Bierce, Volume V, Black Beetles in Amber. New York and Washington: The Neale Publishing Company. pp. 170–171.
12. ^ Darko Suvin. "On What Is and Is Not an SF Narration; With a List of 101 Victorian Books That Should Be Excluded From SF Bibliographies". Retrieved 2012-02-12.
13. Antiquarian Bookseller's Association of America. "Yermah the Dorado". Archived from the original on 2013-02-23. Retrieved 2012-02-12.
14. "Yermah the Dorado". Retrieved 2012-02-12.

External links

• Works by Frona Eunice Wait at Project Gutenberg
• Works by or about Frona Eunice Wait at the Internet Archive
• *Frona and winemaking, has link to biography by John Maher Archived 2020-07-12 at the Wayback Machine

• 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
• American women science fiction and fantasy writers
• American women novelists
• People from Woodland, California
• Novelists from California
• American women magazine editors
• 20th-century American women writers
• American anti-suffragists