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Sir Charles God Damn
A new era in Canadian poetry began in 1880 with the publication of Charles G.D. Roberts’ Orion and Other Poems . He was just twenty years old. Roberts was soon acknowledged as leader of the so-called Confederation Poets—Bliss Carman, Duncan Campbell Scott, and Archibald Lampman. During his long lifetime he wrote hundreds of poems as well as novels, histories, short stories, translations, and essays; he also originated the realistic animal story popularized by Ernest Thompson Seton. He awed literary critics with the versatility of his writing and shocked staid Canadians with the escapades of an unconventional private life.
Married at twenty in his native New Brunswick, Roberts soon after began a series of romantic entanglements. While his wife, May, raised the children in Fredericton, he swanned around New York, Havana, and the capitals of Europe. He experienced the Bohemian life of Washington Square around the turn of the century and lived in Montparnasse long before it became famous as an expatriate haven. In 1907 he sailed off to Europe and stayed for eighteen years. When he finally returned aboard the Berengaria in 1925 for a reading tour, he was lionized from coast to coast. For almost two decades he remained a prominent figure in Canadian literary and social circles. He was national president of the Canadian Authors’ Association from 1927 to 1929, and in 1935 he was knighted. At the age of eighty-three, just three weeks before his death in 1943, he married for a second time.
Perhaps over-praised as a writer in his own lifetime, Roberts’ reputation has since languished. His main literary achievement, Adams concludes, was in being the first Canadian writer to come to terms with the Canadian landscape, influencing his contemporaries to see their own surroundings with fresh and discerning eyes. The story of his personal life, recounted here fully and objectively for the first time, adds a vivid portrait to the gallery of Canada’s literary pioneers.
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Writing the Roaming Subject
Engaging current debates within the studies of life writing and of the nation-state,Writing the Roaming Subjectfocuses on a group of Canadian writers who pose questions about cultural difference and national identity while writing about their own lives and their own experiences of displacement. Joanne Saul uses the term 'biotext' to describe the unique form of writing that challenges critical practices regarding both life writing and immigrant and ethnic minority writing by blurring the borders of biography, autobiography, history, fiction and theory, as well as poetry, prose, and visual representation.
In her readings of selected contemporary Canadian biotexts - including Michael Ondaatje'sRunning in the Family, Daphne Marlatt'sGhost Works, Roy Kiyooka'sMothertalk, and Fred Wah'sDiamond Grill- Saul suggests that by crossing generic boundaries, these works illuminate the complex relationships between language, place, and self as they are manifested in textual form.Writing the Roaming Subjectexplores issues of identity formation, representation, and resistance in Canada and suggests that these are particularly crucial questions during a period of Canadian literary history when so many writers are insisting on new, more diverse cultural performances that resist the pull of the national imaginary.
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A Gentleman of Pleasure
A Gentleman of Pleasure not only spans Glassco's life but delves into his background as a member of a once prominent and powerful Montreal family. In addition to Glassco's readily available work, Brian Busby draws on pseudonymous writings published as a McGill student as well as unpublished and previously unknown poems, letters, and journal entries to detail a vibrant life while pulling back the curtain on Glassco's sexuality and unconventional tastes. In a lively account of a man given to deception, who took delight in hoaxes, Busby manages to substantiate many of the often unreliable statements Glassco made about his life and work. A Gentleman of Pleasure is a remarkable biography that captures the knowable truth about a fascinatingly complex and secretive man.
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House of dreams : the life of L. M. Montgomery
Once upon a time, there was a girl named Maud who adored stories. When she was fourteen years old, Maud wrote in her journal, \"I love books. I hope when I grow up to be able to have lots of them.\" Not only did Maud grow up to own lots of books, she wrote twenty-four of them herself as L. M. Montgomery, the world-renowned author of Anne of Green Gables. For many years, not a great deal was known about Maud's personal life. Her childhood was spent with strict, undemonstrative grandparents, and her reflections on writing, her lifelong struggles with anxiety and depression, her \"year of mad passion,\" and her difficult married life remained locked away, buried deep within her unpublished personal journals. Through this revealing and deeply moving biography, kindred spirits of all ages who, like Maud, never gave up \"the substance of things hoped for\" will be captivated anew by the words of this remarkable woman.
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Paddling Her Own Canoe
Frequently dismissed as a 'nature poet' and an 'Indian Princess' E. Pauline Johnson (1861-1913) was not only an accomplished thinker and writer but a contentious and passionate personality who 'talked back' to Euro-Canadian culture. Paddling Her Own Canoe is the only major scholarly study that examines Johnson's diverse roles as a First Nations champion, New Woman, serious writer and performer, and Canadian nationalist.
A Native advocate of part-Mohawk ancestry, Johnson was also an independent, self-supporting, unmarried woman during the period of first-wave feminism. Her versatile writings range from extraordinarily erotic poetry to polemical statements about the rights of First Nations. Based on thorough research into archival and published sources, this volume probes the meaning of Johnson's energetic career and addresses the complexities of her social, racial, and cultural position. While situating Johnson in the context of turn-of-the-century Canada, the authors also use current feminist and post-colonial perspectives to reframe her contribution. Included is the first full chronology ever compiled of Johnson's writing.
Pauline Johnson was an extraordinary woman who crossed the racial and gendered lines of her time, and thereby confounded Canadian society. This study reclaims both her writings and her larger significance.
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Constance Lindsay Skinner
Born in 1877 on the British Columbia frontier, Constance Lindsay Skinner died in New York City in 1939, a successful and prolific writer. In contrast to her reputation in the United States, she remains virtually unknown in the country of her birth.
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