Short pieces on books I've always meant to review (but haven't).
Psyche
Phyllis Brett Young
Toronto: Longmans, Green, 1959
319 pages
Phyllis Brett Young
Toronto: Longmans, Green, 1959
319 pages
Psyche was Phyllis Brett Young's first book. My copy, signed by the author and inscribed by her mother, was purchased two years ago for £20 from a bookseller in Wallingford, UK. It should have cost me a small fortune.
Canadian literature has not done right by Phyllis Brett Young. Her writing career came and went in ten years – 1959 to 1969 – during which she produced six remarkable books. Well-received, they were published in Canada, the United Kingdom, the United States, and Australia; French, German, Finnish, and Dutch translations followed. And yet, Phyllis Brett Young's name doesn't feature in The Canadian Encylopedia, The Oxford Companion to Canadian Literature, The Cambridge Companion to Canadian Literature or the Encyclopedia of Literature in Canada. I first learned of Young with the 2007 McGill-Queen's University Press reissue of The Torontonians (1960), her second novel.
A novel titled The Torontonians, set in Toronto, written by a Torontonian, rescued from obscurity by a Montreal-based press. At the time, San Grewal wrote a good piece on the novel and its rediscovery for the Toronto Star:
The story of a lost local literary gem, lost and foundMcGill-Queen's reissued Psyche the following year.
In thirteen years of the Dusty Bookcase, both here and in Canadian Notes & Queries, the only Young I've reviewed is The Ravine (1962). A psychological thriller, it stands somewhat apart from her other work. The Ravine made my 2019 list of books deserving return to print. Ten months later, it became the fifteenth Ricochet Books title.
The author's three remaining books – Anything Could Happen! (1961), Undine (1964), and A Question of Judgement (1969) – have now been out of print for more than a half-century.
In a country plagued by indifference regarding its literary heritage, Phyllis Brett Young remains the most unjustly neglected writer.
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| Phyllis Brett Young 1914 - 1996 RIP |
So, what gives? Anti-domestic snobbery? Misogyny? Seeing her work as too demotic? Or did her work simply get lost in the shuffle? I've dug out a few writers in the States who've had similar fates, such as Wilma Shore.
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