Weaver, Emily Poynton

Authored by: Victoria Ho

Emily Poynton Weaver (1865-1943) was born in Manchester, England and moved to Canada with her parents when she was fifteen. She spent most of her childhood in a farm in southwestern Ontario. She later moved to Toronto and Halifax. She was a writer and worked in journalism. She wrote mainly historical stories and non-fiction books on Canadian History. She produced over a dozen fiction stories and collaborated with her sister, an artist and illustrator, to produce books for children. Her earliest novel, My Lady Nell (1890), won a prize in 1890 from the Congregationalist Society of Boston. Her well-known story, The Only Girl: A Tale of 1837 (1925) was about William Lyon Mackenzie and the war of 1837. It was very well received and was reprinted in 1943.  

Furthermore, she published six non-fiction books on Canadian History. Her book A Canadian History for Boys and Girls (1900) was adopted by the Council of Public Instruction for use in schools in the provinces of Quebec, Nova Scotia, and New Brunswick. It also won $200 in a Dominion history competition. Later on she wrote another textbook called The Stories of the Counties of Ontario (1913), which devoted a chapter to each of Ontario’s forty-three counties and eleven districts. Each detailing how it was settled and initially developed.

Weaver was a member of the Ontario Historical Association where she eventually became an honorary lifetime member and was associated with the Toronto branch of the Canadian’s Women’s Press Club, and the Author’s Association. 

References:

Dagg, Anne Innis. The Feminine Gaze: A Canadian Compendium of Non-fiction Women Authors and Their Books, 1836-1945. Waterloo, Ont.: Wilfrid Laurier University Press, 2001.

"Emily Weaver, Author Dies.” The Globe and Mail (1936-Current): 7. Mar 12 1943.  https://search.proquest.com/hnpglobeandmail/docview/1353884547/DDA876D3B2C04789PQ/1?accountid=15182. Accessed 31 July 2017.

“Weaver, Emily Poynton”. SFU Digitized Collections, http://digital.lib.sfu.ca/ceww-685/weaver-emily-poynton. Accessed 24 July 2017.