Edith Summers Kelley was a Canadian

Canada

Canada is a North American country consisting of ten provinces and three territories. Located in the northern part of the continent, it extends from the Atlantic Ocean in the east to the Pacific Ocean in the west, and northward into the Arctic Ocean...

-born author who lived and worked in the United States, and is best known for her 1923 novel Weeds (1923), set in the hills of Kentucky

Kentucky

The Commonwealth of Kentucky is a state located in the East Central United States of America. As classified by the United States Census Bureau, Kentucky is a Southern state, more specifically in the East South Central region. Kentucky is one of four U.S. states constituted as a commonwealth...

.

Kelley was born in Toronto

Toronto

Toronto is the provincial capital of Ontario and the largest city in Canada. It is located in Southern Ontario on the northwestern shore of Lake Ontario. A relatively modern city, Toronto's history dates back to the late-18th century, when its land was first purchased by the British monarchy from...

, Canada, to Scottish immigrants and graduated from the University of Toronto

University of Toronto

The University of Toronto is a public research university in Toronto, Ontario, Canada, situated on the grounds that surround Queen's Park. It was founded by royal charter in 1827 as King's College, the first institution of higher learning in Upper Canada...

 before moving to Greenwich Village

Greenwich Village

Greenwich Village, , , , .in New York often simply called "the Village", is a largely residential neighborhood on the west side of Lower Manhattan in New York City. A large majority of the district is home to upper middle class families...

 where she met Upton Sinclair

Upton Sinclair

Upton Beall Sinclair Jr. , was an American author who wrote close to one hundred books in many genres. He achieved popularity in the first half of the twentieth century, acquiring particular fame for his classic muckraking novel, The Jungle . It exposed conditions in the U.S...

, who offered her a job at Helicon Home Colony

Helicon Home Colony

Helicon Home Colony was an experimental community formed by author Upton Sinclair in Englewood, New Jersey, United States, with proceeds from his novel The Jungle. Established in 1906, it burned down in 1907 and was disbanded....

. At the colony she met Sinclair Lewis

Sinclair Lewis

Harry Sinclair Lewis was an American novelist, short-story writer, and playwright. In 1930, he became the first writer from the United States to be awarded the Nobel Prize in Literature, "for his vigorous and graphic art of description and his ability to create, with wit and humor, new types of...

 and they were engaged for two years, but she married his roommate, a poet and novelist named Allan Updegraff. She taught night school to support him and their two children. They divorced, and she took up with an artist, Fred Kelley, with whom she moved around the country and had another child. Weeds was conceived while she and Kelley lived on a tobacco farm in Scott County, Kentucky

Scott County, Kentucky

Scott County is a county located in the U.S. state of Kentucky. The population was 47,173 in the 2010 Census. Its county seat is Georgetown.Scott County is part of the Lexington–Fayette Metropolitan Statistical Area.-Geography:...

. It had some positive reviews but no commercial success; a second novel, The Devil's Hand, written while she and Kelley lived in Imperial Valley, California

California

California is a state located on the West Coast of the United States. It is by far the most populous U.S. state, and the third-largest by land area...

, was left unfinished, and wasn't printed until 1974.