Weeds

Virtually ignored upon its initial publication in 1923, Edith Summers Kelley’s Weeds was hailed as “unquestionably a major work of American fiction” by the New York Times upon its republication half a century later. Weeds is now available for the first time in digital format. 


Set amid the tenant farms of Kentucky, Weeds is the story of Judith Pippenger, a bright and independent young woman whose dreams and views on life, motherhood, and the world in general set her apart from the mostly beaten down farmers that surround her. 


Kelley’s depiction of Judith aligns her with other early feminist writers such as Kate Chopin and Charlotte Perkins Gilman, and her unflinching depiction of the soul-crushing social, economic, and natural forces that hover over the Kentucky tobacco fields places Kelley among the giants of American literary naturalism.