New Canadian Library


Book Description

In the mid-1950s, much Canadian literature was out of print, making it relatively inaccessible to readers, including those studying the subject in schools and universities. When English professor Malcolm Ross approached Toronto publisher Jack McClelland in 1952 to propose a Canadian literary reprint series, it was still the accepted wisdom among publishers that Canadian literature was of insufficient interest to the educational market to merit any great publishing risks. Eventually convinced by Ross that a latent market for Canadian literary reprints did indeed exist, McClelland & Stewart launched the New Canadian Library (NCL) series in 1958, with Ross as its general editor. In 2008, the NCL will celebrate a half-century of publication. In New Canadian Library, Janet B. Friskney takes the reader through the early history of the NCL series, focusing on the period up to 1978 when Malcolm Ross retired as general editor. A wealth of archival resources, published reviews, and the NCL volumes themselves are used to survey the working relationship between Ross and McClelland, as well as the collaborative participation of those who, through the middle decades of the twentieth century, were committed to studying and nurturing Canada's literary heritage. To place the New Canadian Library in its proper historical context, Friskney examines the simultaneous development of Canadian literary studies as a legitimate area of research and teaching in academe and acknowledges the NCL as a milestone in Canadian publishing history.










Two Solitudes


Book Description

Winner of the Governor General’s Award for Fiction Canada Reads Selection (CBC), 2013 A landmark of nationalist fiction, Hugh MacLennan’s Two Solitudes is the story of two peoples within one nation, each with its own legend and ideas of what a nation should be. In his vivid portrayals of human drama in First World War–era Quebec, MacLennan focuses on two individuals whose love increases the prejudices that surround them until they discover that “love consists in this, that two solitudes protect, and touch and greet each other.” The novel centres around Paul Tallard and his struggles in reconciling the differences between the English identity of his love Heather Methuen and her family, and the French identity of his father. Against this backdrop the country is forming, the chasm between French and English communities growing deeper. Published in 1945, the novel popularized the use of “two solitudes” as referring to a perceived lack of communication between English- and French-speaking Canadians. Content note: This book contains racial slurs that readers may find offensive or upsetting.













The Incomparable Atuk


Book Description




As Birds Bring Forth the Sun and Other Stories


Book Description

The superbly crafted stories collected in Alistair MacLeod’s As Birds Bring Forth the Sun and Other Stories depict men and women acting out their “own peculiar mortality” against the haunting landscape of Cape Breton Island. In a voice at once elegiac and life-affirming, MacLeod describes a vital present inhabited by the unquiet spirits of a Highland past, invoking memory and myth to celebrate the continuity of the generations even in the midst of unremitting change. His second collection, As Birds Bring Forth the Sun and Other Stories confirms MacLeod’s international reputation as a storyteller of rare talent and inspiration.