Frona Eunice Wait

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.