Her Memory 40 Years later
How Eyewitness Edna Wilson Becsey Describes the Formation of the Sacramento Branch of the California Writers Club
It was a Saturday night.
Some 40 years earlier, county government secretary Edna Becsey, seen then as an emerging published writer, had the privilege of serving as the first president of the Sacramento Branch of the California Writers Club.
On this Saturday, four decades later, May 16 of 1964, she returned to the club for a dinner meeting where she would recount the formation of the organization, giving eyewitness testimony to the 1925 events unfolding within Sacramento’s literary community.
Much of her recollection of those early days was typed on branch letterhead and preserved in club archives. Below is an excerpt of her talk, presented as it was typed word for word, comma for comma — inclusive of inconsistently applied apostrophes and spelling variations.
Fame and Intrigue in the Archives: Is the Legendary Jack London a Founder of the California Writers Club?
By Kimberly A. Edwards
To hear it from reporter Herman Whitaker or labor attorney Austin Lewis, they, along with poet George Sterling and Jack London, started the California Writers Club. Yet, if you were to listen to the Alameda Press Club, comprised mainly of women, they would say – not so fast.
Handwritten notes from early meetings suggest that the California Writers Club emerged from the press club. In fact, Alameda Press Club minutes and other sources reflect a name change to the California Writers Club on March 7, 1911. Notes suggest that this occurred after a “conference” with Whitaker, Lewis, Sterling, and London.
Lewis and fellow socialist Whitaker kept up the chant that they, along with London and Sterling – the affable Bohemian mentored by Ambrose Pierce, who was arguably Jack London’s best friend (decades later, he would commit suicide in the Bohemian Club) – founded the California Writers Club.
How Transportation Forged the History of Writing in Sacramento
By Ted Witt, Pretty Road Press
Literary kinetics in the Bay Area in the early 1900s did not escape the attention of writers in Sacramento. The Bohemian writers in San Francisco, Oakland, and Berkeley were gaining national attention as antipodes to uppity New York and Boston — not only by way of geography but also by ideas and literary style.
For Sacramentans, there would be no better writing mentors in the pre-World War I literary scene than Bay Area influencers like Joaquin Miller, George Sterling, and Herman Whitaker. Even Jack London would be worth a trip to the Bay Area if he were in town telling stories. But getting to the Bay Area was difficult..