Double-Voicing the Canadian Short Story is the first comparative study of eight internationally and nationally acclaimed writers of short fiction: Sandra Birdsell, Timothy Findley, Jack Hodgins, Thomas King, Alistair MacLeod, Olive Senior, Carol Shields and Guy Vanderhaeghe. With the 2013 Nobel Prize for Literature going to Alice Munro, the “mast …

Carroll Aikins’s play The God of Gods (1919) has been out of print since its first and only edition in 1927. This critical edition not only revives the work for readers and scholars alike, it also provides historical context for Aikins’s often overlooked contributions to theatre in the 1920s and presents research on the different staging techni …

The 1940 Under the Volcano—hidden for too long in the shadows of Lowry’s 1947 masterpiece—differs from the latter in significant ways. It is a bridge between Lowry’s 1930s fiction (especially In Ballast to the White Sea) and the 1947 Under the Volcano itself. Joining the recently published Swinging the Maelstrom and In Ballast to the White …

Eminent Northrop Frye scholar Robert D. Denham explores the connection between Frye and twelve writers who influenced his thinking but about whom he didn’t write anything expansive. Denham draws especially on Frye’s notebooks and other previously unpublished texts, now available in the Collected Works of Frye. Such varied thinkers as Aristotle, …

Hugh Garner’s Best Stories received the Governor General’s Literary Award for English-language fiction in 1963. The collection consists of twenty-four stories composed between the late 1930s and the early 1960s and reflects the immense flux of the mid-century, from the Great Depression to the Spanish Civil War, World War II, the Civil Rights mo …

From the Canadian Short Story Library, twelve stories from Desmond Pacey, a major figure in Canadian Literature and criticism. The twelve stories are typical of Pacey's story-telling technique and what emerges from them is a distinctive, even powerful optimism, charity, tolerance and deep understanding of human nature. The sombre side of life is ho …

"Carol was a very fine writer and a remarkable human being, a wonderful person whose work I closely followed for more than 20 years. I interviewed her frequently over those years, with virtually every work she produced —novel, radio drama, play, book of stories. So I had a good sense of the span of her work and also her evolution as a stylist. Bu …

In Ballast to the White Sea is Malcolm Lowry’s most ambitious work of the mid-1930s. Inspired by his life experience, the novel recounts the story of a Cambridge undergraduate who aspires to be a writer but has come to believe that both his book and, in a sense, his life have already been “written.” After a fire broke out in Lowry’s squatte …

Miriam Waddington's verse is deceptively accessible: it is personal but never private, emotional but not confessional, thoughtful but never cerebral. The subtlety of her craft is the hallmark of a modernist poet whose work opens to the world and its readers. She details intoxicating romance and mature love, the pleasures of marriage and motherhood, …

This book, first published as Quand la nation débordait les frontières (Hurtubise HMH, 2004), is considered the most comprehensive analysis of Lionel Groulx's work and vision as an intellectual leader of a nationalist school that extended well beyond the borders of Québec. 

Recipient of the 2005 Governor General's Literary Award in non-fiction, t …

Home Ground and Foreign Territory is an original collection of essays on early Canadian literature in English. Aiming to be both provocative and scholarly, it encompasses a variety of (sometimes opposing) perspectives, subjects, and methods, with the aim of reassessing the field, unearthing neglected texts, and proposing new approaches to canonical …

Flora Lyndsay is Susanna Moodie’s prequel to Roughing it in the Bush and Life in the Clearings. Though Moodie fictionalizes herself in the context of this novel, Flora Lyndsay remains a close personalized record of her family’s experiences in planning their emigration and crossing the Atlantic.

Despite the limited critical attention it receives, …

Swinging the Maelstrom is the story of a musician enduring existence in the Bellevue psychiatric hospital in New York. Written during his happiest and most fruitful years, this novella reveals the deep healing influence that the idyllic retreat at Dollarton had on Lowry. This long-overdue scholarly edition will allow scholars to engage in a geneti …

Over the past forty years, Canadian literature has found its way to the silver screen with increasing regularity. Beginning with the adaptation of Margaret Laurence’s A Jest of God to the Hollywood film Rachel, Rachel in 1966, Canadian writing would appear to have found a doubly successful life for itself at the movies: from the critically accla …

This volume comprises a reprinting and gloss of the original text of the 1933 Communist play Eight Men Speak. The play was banned by the Toronto police after its first performance, banned by the Winnipeg police shortly thereafter and subsequently banned by the Canadian Post Office. The play can be considered as one stage–the published text–of a …

It would be difficult to exaggerate the worldwide impact of postmodernism on the fields of cultural production and the social sciences over the last quarter century—even if the concept has been understood in various, even contradictory, ways. An interest in postmodernism and postmodernity has been especially strong in Canada, in part thanks to th …

More than fifty years after the publication of Anatomy of Criticism, Northrop Frye remains one of Canada's most influential intellectuals. This reappraisal reasserts the relevance of his work to the study of literature and illuminates its fruitful intersection with a variety of other fields, including film, cultural studies, linguistics, and femini …

Winner of the 2010 Margaret Atwood Society Best Book Prize.

In Engendering Genre, renowned Margaret Atwood scholar Reingard M. Nischik analyzes the relationship between gender and genre in Atwood’s works. She approaches Atwood’s oeuvre by genre – poetry, short fiction, novels, criticism, comics, and film – and examines them …

Bertram Brooker won the country's first Governor General's Award for literature in 1936 for his novel Think of the Earth, and his explosive, experimental paintings hang in every major gallery in the country. He was Canada's first multidisciplinary avantgardist, successfully experimenting in literature, visual arts, film, and theatre. Brooker broug …

Exploring a variety of topics—including health, politics, education, art, literature, media, and film—Aboriginal Canada Revisited draws a portrait of the current political and cultural position of Canada’s Aboriginal peoples. While lauding improvements made in the past decades, the contributors draw attention to the systemic problems that con …

While translation history in Canada is well documented, the history of the translation of Canadian fiction outside the nation remains obscure. Les Belles Étrangères examines the translation of Canadian English-language fiction in France. This book considers the history of this practice, the reasons for the move away from Quebec translators as wel …

If one poet can be said to be the Canadian poet, that poet is Al Purdy (1918–2000). Numerous eminent scholars and writers have attested to this pre-eminent status. George Bowering described him as “the world’s most Canadian poet” (1970), while Sam Solecki titled his book-length study of Purdy The Last Canadian Poet (1999). In The Ivory Thou …

In the last thirty years of the twentieth century, Canadian federal governments offered varying degrees of support for literary and other artistic endeavour. A corollary of this patronage of culture at home was an effort to make the resulting works available for audiences elsewhere in the world. Current developments in the study of translation and …

Other Selves: Animals in the Canadian Literary Imagination begins with the premise, first suggested by Margaret Atwood in The Animals in That Country (1968), that animals have occupied a peculiarly central position in the Canadian imagination. Unlike the longer-settled countries of Europe or the more densely-populated United States, in Canada anima …

Margaret Atwood enjoys a unique prominence in Canadian letters. With over thirty books to her credit, in genres ranging from children's writing to dystopic novels, she is as creatively diverse as she is internationally acclaimed. Her success, however, has been double-edged: the very popularity that makes her such a prominent figure in the literary …

The Canadian Modernists Meet is a collection of new critical essays on major and rediscovered Canadian writers of the early to mid-twentieth century. F.R. Scott's well-known poem 'The Canadian Authors Meet' sets the theme for the volume: a revisiting of English Canada's formative movements in modernist poetry, fiction, and drama. As did Scott's poe …

Canadian literature, and specifically the teaching of Canadian literature, has emerged from a colonial duty to a nationalist enterprise and into the current territory of postcolonialism. From practical discussions related to specific texts, to more theoretical discussions about pedagogical practice regarding issues of nationalism and identity, Home …

At the Speed of Light There is Only Illumination collects a dozen re-evaluative essays on Marshall McLuhan and his critical and theoretical legacy; from intellectual adventurer creating a complex architecture of ideas to cultural icon standing in line in Woody Allen’s Annie Hall. Given McLuhan’s prominent status in many academic disciplines, th …

This collection of essays on the writing of Robertson Davies addresses the basic problems in reading his work by looking at the topics of doubling, disguise, irony, paradox, and dwelling in "gaps" or spaces "in between." The essays present new insights on a broad range of topics in Davies' oeuvre and represent one of the first major discussions dev …

This book highlights the accomplishments of one of Canada's most acclaimed and beloved fiction writers, Margaret Laurence. The essays in this collection explore her body of work as well as her influence on young Canadian writers today. Margaret Laurence: Critical Reflections brings together twelve distinguished scholars, critics, and writers to ill …

Canadian critics and scholars, along with a growing number from around the world, have long recognized the achievements of Canadian short story writers. However, these critics have tended to view the Canadian short story as a historically recent phenomenon. This reappraisal corrects this mistaken view by exploring the literary and cultural antecede …

A growing number of literary historians and critics now recognize the contemporary long poem as a distinctively Canadian genre. This collection of essays leads the reader to a deeper understanding of Canadian literary cultures in terms of their local intimacies and idiosyncrasies as well as in their national contexts.

Susanna Moodie is, of course, best known for her books Roughing It in the Bush and Life in the Clearings, which are largely comprised of short sketches that she had previously published. What is not widely known, however, is that Moodie had a long and prolific literary career in which short sketches and tales were among her favoured genres. This bo …

New Women is an anthology of short fiction written by Canadian women between 1900 and 1920. The carefully selected stories by writers such as L.M. Montgomery, Nellie McClung, and Marjorie Pickthall provide dramatic and imaginative glimpses of Canadian society and of the women who lived during those momentous years.

First-wave feminist, activist, and social reformer, Nellie McClung ranked as one of the most popular Canadian authors and among the liveliest critics of Canada's male-dominated society. Well ahead of her time, McClung was known as a writer who dared to discuss taboo topics, and for her inimitable humour, which rivals that of Stephen Leacock. This s …

The Quebec Anthology: 1830-1990 provides a complete overview of the Quebec short story from its beginnings to the 1990s and offers a unique opportunity for English readers to discover the essence of this fascinating literature. In addition, a detailed biography of each author and an assessment of each story's place in the larger canvas of Quebec li …

The North has always had, and still has, an irresistible attraction. This fascination is made up of a mixture of perspectives, among these, the various explorations of the Arctic itself and the Inuk cultural heritage found in the elders' and contemporary stories. This book discusses the different generations of explorers and writers and illustrates …

Forest and other Gleanings reclaims for the contemporary reader a number of stories and sketches written by Catharine Parr Traill after her emigration to Canada in 1832. While most pieces collected here appeared in magazines in Britain, the United States, and Canada, a few have been drawn from archival holdings and make their first appearance here. …

Pioneering Women is an anthology of short fiction written before 1880 by Canadian women, including Susanna Moodie, Catharine Parr Traill, and Rosanna Mullins Leprohon. From the Maritimes to Upper Canada, from backwoods to the drawing room, this collection demonstrates the variety that exists in stories by women of early British North America.

This is a collection of the published and previously unpublished short stories by Thomas Murtha, a Canadian writer born and raised in Ontario. Murtha was one of the notable experimental writers of the 1920s, but his work has been largely ignored by literary historians. Thomas Murtha was a classmate and colleague of other notable Canadians including …