A Nova Scotian Writes Ontario Gothic

Morgan's Castle
Jan Hilliard [Hilda Kay Grant]
New York: Abelard & Schulman, 1964
188 pages

An uncredited dust jacket of mysterious design, whatever does it mean? The rear image provides no clue.

The covers of Jan Hilliard's other novels are much more straight-forward. Consider this:

A View of the Town, is "A NOVEL OF SMALL TOWN LIFE IN NOVA SCOTIA," as are most of her novels. Morgan's Castle stands with The Jameson Girls and Dove Cottage as one of three set outside her home province. The Jameson Girls and Dove Cottage are darker than her Nova Scotia novels, while Morgan's Castle is the darkest by far. This is not to suggest that the humour, which runs through all her fiction, is entirely black.

Jan Hilliard's career as a novelist lasted just ten years. One wonders why it wasn't longer. Her novels garnered uniformly positive reviews – I've yet to find an exception – yet Morgan's Castle is the only one to have been reissued in paperback. "A spellbinding novel of romance and suspense in the Du Maurier [sic] tradition," the tagline reads. I was reminded more of Muriel Spark and Margaret Millar, but this may be because I'm more familiar with their respective works.

The heroine of Morgan's Castle is Laura Dean. The youngest member of the Dean family, she lives with her widowed artist father Sidney in a ramshackle house located somewhere in the countryside between lakes Ontario and Erie. Amy Scott, sister of Laura's late mother, isn't at all happy with her niece's situation. Nature can have such a bad influence on a maturing girl. And then there's Sidney, who Amy considers a "rural Dion Juan." For goodness sake, the man gets around on a bicycle! 

Aunt Amy has sent Laura money for a train ticket to the town of Greenwood, where she lives and breeds spaniels. There is a husband, Uncle James, but he is as irrelevant to the story as he is to Aunt Amy. The focus of her life is Charlotte Morgan, depicted here by Reint de Jonge on the cover of the Dutch translation, Spel met de dood (Haarlem: Staarnrstad, 1966).

Charlotte may just be the most beautiful, most refined, most elegant woman in Greenwood; that she is the wealthiest is not up for debate. The widow of Robert Morgan, heir to a vast Niagara winery, she lives with her twenty-eight-year-old son Robbie and various servants at Hilltop House, known to the locals as "Morgan's Castle." It is located on a bluff above and away from the town and is described as looking something like a castle, though the artist for the Ace edition imagines it as a large Anglican church. 

Aunt Amy sent her niece train fare on the pretence of wanting to give the girl a birthday party. Laura's four brothers and their wives will be there, but not the patriarch. Amy is well aware that Sidney won't be able to afford a ticket.

Because she's turning sixteen, Laura's siblings are concerned about shouldering the cost of further education. Is it not enough that their wives provide her with their castoffs? Sure, those old dresses have frayed hems and missing buttons, but Laura knows knows how to sew. They need not worry. Aunt Amy has a plan – and it has nothing to do with tuition.

Over the past year, Charlotte has taken a shining to the girl. Once so skinny and boyish, Laura is becoming a woman. This, um, development hasn't escaped Aunt Amy's attention either. She criticizes her niece's white dress as being too revealing, even though it's an old thing that once belonged to a brother's wife.

Aunt Amy's attraction to Charlotte is nuanced while Charlotte's attraction to Laura is simple. She would like the girl to marry her son Robbie, produce offspring, and secure the line of succession in the family business. Never mind the age difference, the time is right. It's almost as if the fates had brought them together. Just a few months ago, not long after Laura's last visit to Greenwood, Robbie's childless wife Phyllis died suddenly after having sprinkled arsenic, which she thought was sugar, on a bowl of strawberries.

In his 1995 anthology Investigating Women, David Skene-Melvin describes Laura as a detective.

She is not.

Laura has a handle on her ne'er-do-well father, but is nowhere near so savvy or keen-eyed when it comes to others. There's no surprise here. Despite having had to deal with Sidney's fabrication and deceit, her innocence is such that she believes these traits are unique to Sidney.

Morgan's Castle is in no way a detective novel, nor is it a mystery novel, though there are two murders (and many more in the backstory). The first murderer is obvious. The second murderer is a little less so, though one anticipates the act. 

So much of what happens escapes Laura's attention. Does the girl's innocence have something to do with the rural environment Aunt Amy so disparages?

Could be.

Object: Yellow boards in an uncredited dust jacket. I've mentioned the uncredited bit before, I know, but it is relevant here because Hilliard, who worked for Abelard-Schulman, provided her own covers. The only one I have seen credited is Dove Cottage, which features this illustration by son of Scotland William McLaren:

Access: As with the author's four other novels, the first edition of Morgan's Castle enjoyed one lone printing. What sets it apart is a mass market paperback published three years later by Ace featured above, making it the biggest selling of the author's nine books.

The Toronto Star Weekly published Morgan's Castle in two parts over two issues (July 11-18, 1964). I've consulted various pals about the Ace cover, but have no definitive answer as to who should be credited with the illustration. What I can say is that it is accurate in its depiction of Laura.

As I write, two copies of the Abelard-Schulman edition are being offered online. Both ex-library copies, they're listed at US$5.06 and US$64.67. Take your pick. Two copies of the Ace edition are also listed. The cheaper, at US$7.12, has a cocked spine. The other, which "can have notes/highlighting," is being sold by Thrift Books for US$50.06.

The less said about Thrift Books the better.

Staarnrstad's aforementioned Spel met de dood was republished at some point. Judging by the dress, I'm guessing the second appeared in the 'seventies.

Related posts:

A Crooked Cousin in a Cunning Cottage

Growing up with Mother

Morley Callaghan's Red Ryan Rocket

More Joy in Heaven
Morley Callaghan
New York: Random House, 1937
278 pages

It's been decades since Intro to CanLit II, my second introduction to Canadian literature. Like Intro to CanLit I, the  course covered four works; all novels, all written by men. Hugh MacLennan's The Watch That Ends the Night was my favourite, but I do remember liking They Shall Inherit the Earth. We were told that its author, Morley Callaghan, was “perhaps the most unjustly neglected novelist in the English-speaking world.” Here our professor was quoting Edmund Wilson. He made much of this, but at  twenty the name Edmund Wilson meant nothing to me.

They Shall Inherit the Earth (1935) sits in the middle of a run of three novels considered Callaghan's best. The first, Such is My Beloved (1934), involves a handsome young priest – in fiction all young priests are handsome – who befriends two prostitutes. It vies with the third, More Joy in Heaven, as Callaghan's best known novel. They Shall Inherit the Earth is not nearly so well known. You can understand why. They Shall Inherit the Earth is a story about a father and son who, to quote the cover of my old NCL edition (right), are "forced to re-examine the nature of individual conscience and responsibility." It has no sex workers, nor does it have a bank robber.

More Joy in Heaven has both.

Its protagonist, Kip Caley, isn't a prostitute, but he had robbed banks – so many banks that he was sentenced to life and twenty lashes. In prison, Caley underwent a transformation of some kind. There's no suggestion that he found God, though Caley did find Father Butler, the prison chaplain. Somehow, the worst man in Canada becomes the most beloved.

Callaghan is lazy.

The novel opens on Christmas Day, the day of Caley's release from Kingston Penitentiary. Father Brown is present, as is Senator Maclean, who had fought for a pardon.

Caley returns to his hometown, Toronto, where he takes a job at a hotel and nightclub that caters to sporting types. The senator arranged it all. A greeter, a position in which he never feels comfortable, all Caley has to do is welcome patrons. Everyone wants to meet the reformed man; it's great for business. Kip Caley is the toast of the town, but as months pass he seems more the man of the hour.

More Joy in Heaven is a good novel, but the greatest fiction is found on its copyright page:

Contemporary reviewers were not fooled.

Callaghan modelled Caley on Norman "Red" Ryan, a career criminal who had been killed by police on 23 May 1936, eighteen months before publication. It was big news.
 

The Globe, 25 May 1936

Like Caley, Ryan was held up – no pun intended  – as a model of reform. He was fêted and given plumb jobs,  including a weekly radio show, only to be gunned down ten months later during the botched robbery of a Sarnia liquor store.

The Big Red Fox, Peter McSherry's 1999 Arthur Ellis nominated biography of Ryan, is recommended.

More Joy in Heaven is also recommended, as is They Shall Inherit the Earth.

I'm guessing Edmund Wilson would concur.

Trivia: Ernest Hemingway covered Ryan for the Toronto Daily Star and had himself considered writing a novel with a character modelled on the man. I've often wondered whether Papa mentioned the idea to fellow Star reporter Callaghan.

Object: I purchased my copy, a first edition, in 1989 from a cart at the Westmount Public Library. Sadly, it lacks the dust jacket (above), but then what can you expect for $1.00.

Access: The novel remains in print, though I suspect the copies have been sitting in Penguin Random House for over a decade now. What's offered features the 2007 New Canadian Library cover design... and, well, the New Canadian Library is long dead.

The 1960 and 2009 NCL editions.

More Joy in Heaven was one of the earliest NCL titles. Hugo McPherson wrote the introduction to the first NCL edition; Margaret Avison wrote an afterword for the last. Penguin Random House LLC is asking $19.95, though used copies are far cheaper. First editions listed online start at US$20 (sans dust jacket) and go all the way up to US$150. For my money, the best buy is a Very Good to Near Fine copy offered by a Winchester, Virginia bookseller. Price: US$110.

I expected Italian and French translations, but have found only a Russian: Радость на небесах. The first in a three-novel Морли Каллаган volume published in 1982, it also features Тихий уголок (A Fine and Private Place) and И снова к солнцу (Closer to the Sun).

Why those novels, I wonder?

I read More Joy in Heaven for The 1937 Club.

After all these years, the only other 1937 title I've reviewed at The Dusty Bookcase is John by Irene Baird.

Related post:

James de Mille's Antarctic Death Cult
A Quiet, Mildly Depressing Depression-Era Debut

Eight Gifts to Last

In past years I've noted gifts and donations to the Dusty Bookcase at the end of the annual list of Ten Best Book Buys. An exception is made here because of the shear volume, and because I wanted to add a personal note. And We Go On seems an appropriate title with which to start.

And We Go On

Will R. Bird

Toronto: Hunter-Rose, 1930

A memoir of the Great War, this first edition was given to me by military historian James Calhoun, with whom I co-authored the introduction to the 2014 Dundurn edition of Peregrine Acland's All Else Is Folly. Note the dust jacket description:

A story of the War by a Private in

the Canadian Black Watch;

a Story Without Filth

or Favour.

Bird's memoir was inspired in part by his disgust at the portrayal of soldiers in All Quiet on the Western Front and Generals Die in Bed. He wouldn't have liked All Else Is Folly. 

 

Outlaw Breed

William Byron Mowery

Calabasas, CA: Cutting Edge, 2023

Novelist Lee Greenwood is doing God's work in reviving neglected novels. He reached out three years ago after I reviewed former Vancouver Sun scribe Tom Ardies' 1971 thriller Their Man in the White House. You'd like it. The novel tells the story of an American president who is beholding to the Russians. Oh, and he has an unusual – I suggest unhealthy – relationship with his blonde daughter. Lee was then in the process of returning all Ardies' novels to print.

Outlaw Breed is not a political thriller. First published in 1936 under the title Black Automatic, it was written by a Buckeye known as the "Zane Grey of the Canadian Northwest." Starring Noel Irving, ex-RCMP, the action begins with a murder in Winnipeg, moves on to Fort McMurray, and then the Northwest Territories.

The Woman's Harvest

Anna Floyd

London: T. Werner Laurie, 1916

An obscure novel by a forgotten English writer, set in England in and around the time of the Great War, The Woman's Harvest has nothing whatsoever to do with Canada, yet I was drawn to it after reading Brad Bigelow's Neglected Books review. I just had to read it, but not a one was listed for sale online. Worse still, the nearest copy is found in the National Library of Scotland. Brad was generous in giving me his. I'll say no more because Brad's review says it all. You'll want to read it, too.
 

Canada Speaks of Britain

and Other Poems of the War

Charles G.D. Roberts
Toronto: Ryerson, 1941

The River St. John and Its Poets

L.M.B. Maxwell

[n.p.]: [n.p], 1946

Two chapbooks donated by my friend Forrest Pass. The earlier, Sir Charles' Canada Speaks of Britain features seven "Poems of the War" (including 'Peace With Dishonour,' which was actually composed in September, 1938), along with three poems from the previous war, and three more poems thrown in for good measure. The longest in the collection is 'Two Rivers':

                     Two rivers are there in hold my heart
                          And neither would I leave.
                     When I would stay with one two long

                          The other tugs my sleeve.

The two rivers are the Tantamar and the St. John, which ties in nicely to The River St. John and Its Poets by L.M.B. Maxwell, LL.D. It consists of a series of biographical sketches and sample poems of sixteen poets, including Sir Charles G.D. Roberts, LL.D., D. Litt.; Theodore Goodrich Roberts, D. Litt.; William Bliss Carman, M.A., LL. D.; and Alfred Goldsworthy Bailey, M.A., Ph.D. I was more interested in plain old Francis Sherman, Charles Boyle, and Elizabeth Roberts MacDonald, whose home I visited last autumn.
 

The Complete Adventures of Jimmie Dale, Volume Three

Frank L. Packard

[n.p.]: [n.p], 2022

The final volume of Packard scholar Michael Howard's annotated compilation of Packard's Gray Seal novels, this one includes Jimmie Dale and the Blue Envelope Murder (1930), Jimmie Dale and the Missing Hour (1935), and the unfinished and previously unpublished Jimmie Dale's Only Chance. 

But wait, there's more!

Also included are four chapters that were cut from The Further Adventures of Jimmie Dale (1919), the script for the first episode of the radio serial The Adventures of Jimmie Dale, the beginning of the British edition of The Adventures of Jimmie Dale (in which our hero is an Englishman), and a family biography by the late Francis Lucius Packard.  

The author's grandson, Jeffrey Packard, provides the preface. 

All three volumes can be ordered through Amazon.

One last  gift:

Self Condemned
Wyndham Lewis
Toronto: Dundurn, 2010

My friend Michael Gnarowski died on July 27th of this year. He'd taught at three universities, one of which I attended, but I was not one students. Still, I learned a great deal from Michael. We first met twenty years ago when I was working on my biography of of his friend John Glassco, that great practitioner of deceit. He and I were dogged in our pursuit of "the knowable truth." 

Our last days together started over pints in an Ottawa strip mall pub – the fish and chips wasn't terrible – after which we'd move on to apple pie and vanilla ice cream at the flat he shared with his wife Diana. In our second to last meeting, Michael pulled out this slightly battered copy Self Condemned, asking whether I had a copy.

I lied.

This edition is a Voyageur Classic, a series that followed the Carleton Library and the Centre for Editing Early Canadian Texts series, all of which Michael had overseen. I'd bought each Voyageur Classic upon release, and was honoured when he accepted my proposal to include All Else Is Folly (see above) in the series.

And so, because I lied, I was able to accept his generosity. Michael signed my copy, explaining that his writing hand would not do what he wanted it to.

 

I last saw Michael on Father's Day, which somehow seems appropriate. He ordered the fish and chips, and then we had pie and ice cream.

17 September 1934, Shanghai, China

July 27, 2023, Ottawa, Canada 

RIP

Related post:
Blue Plaque Special: Maritime Edition
The Further Frustrations of Jimmie Dale
Alec Falcon, C'est Moi
Freedom to Read Week: Generals Die in Bed (I)
Freedom to Read Week: Generals Die in Bed (II)

Dope. Danger. One Doll.

Lost House
Frances Shelley Wees
Winnipeg: Harlequin, 1949
192 pages

Frances Shelley Wees runs hot and cold with me. I liked The Keys of My Prison so much that I selected it for reissue as a Ricochet Book. I did the same with M'Lord, I Am Not Guilty, but disliked No Pattern for Life, This Necessary Murder, and Where Is Jenny Now?*

So, Lost House? Hot or cold?

The prologue is frozen solid. This takes the form of a brief conversation between the head of  Scotland Yard's Criminal Investigations Department and one of his detectives. Apparently, a man known as "the Angel" is up to something in a place known as "Lost House." The detective is dispatched to see what's what:

He rose. "Very well, sir, I'll have a go at it."

Action shifts to British Columbia, where newly-minted physician David Ayelsworth is exploring "the forest primeval" astride his horse Delilah. What David finds is a half-submerged body by the shore of a lake. The doctor's attention is then drawn to the sound of a young woman chasing a dog. She falls, twists her ankle, and he comes to her aid. The injured young woman is Pamela Leighton, who lives at nearby Lost House.

Harlequin's cover reminds me of nothing so much as Garnett Weston's Legacy of Fear (New York: W S Mill/William Morrow, 1950), which also features a grand house in a remote corner British Columbia.

Interesting to note, I think, that both pre-date Psycho.

The mysterious D. Rickard is credited with Harlequin's cover art. I make a thing of his rendition because Rickard's Lost House isn't at all as described in the novel. Wees's Lost House rests on a walled island linked to the mainland by causeway and drawbridge. An immense structure, an exact replica of an English country manor, it was built by an eccentric Englishman who sought to further his wealth through a local silver mine. The mine proved a dud, the Englishman died, and all was inherited by Pamela Leighton's mother. Improbably, Mrs Leighton manages to maintain the estate by taking in paying guests during the summer months. This year, they include:

• James Herrod Payne, novelist;
• Shane Meredith, tenor;
• Archdeacon Branscombe, archdeacon;
• Lord Geoffrey Revel, lord.

There's a fifth male guest, an unknown who is being cared for by Mayhew, the resident doctor. The patient was brought in one night after having taken ill on a train stopped at Dark Forest, the closest community.

(That Lost House has an infirmary speaks to its immensity. That Lost House staff and guests are close in number speaks to Mrs Leighton's financial difficulties.)

There are also four female guests, Lord Geoffrey's mother being one, but it's the males that command our scrutiny; after all, we know the Angel to be a man.

Which is the Angel? Which is the Scotland Yard detective? It's impossible to tell. The focus is so much on David and Pamela, and to a lesser extent Mrs Leighton and Dr Mayhew, that the guests are little more than ghosts. The reader encounters them from time to time, but as characters they barely exist. Lost House fails as a mystery for the simple reason that Wees provides no clues. The Angel could be any one of the male guests. Indeed – and here I spoil things – much of the drama in the climax comes when he passes himself off as the Scotland Yard detective. And why not? There's nothing that might lead the reader or the other characters to suspect otherwise.

As the novel approaches mid-point, Pamela apologies to David. "I've dragged you into a dreadful mess," she says. "I've spoiled your holiday..."

This isn't true; David's involvement has nothing to do with her. He's at Lost House because the body he found by the lake turns out to be that of a missing Lost House staff member.

Lost House is a dreadful mess. The novel's disorder may have something to do with the fact that it first appeared serialized in Argosy (Aug 27 - Oct 1, 1938). Its fabric is woven with several threads that are subsequently dropped, the most intriguing involving Verve. A new brand of cigarette. Verve is a frequent topic of conversation, as in this early exchange between Pamela and David:  

"You've been smoking a tremendous lot." Her eyes were on the big ash tray before her.

   "Yes."
   "I like Verves," she decided, looking at the tray. "Not as much as you do, apparently... I don't smoke very much though. But when one is a bit tired, a Verve seems to give one exhilaration. Doesn't it?"
   "Yes," David said after a moment, "I... think it does."

   "You say that very strangely."
   "Do I ?" He shifted in his chair. "perhaps I'm a little lightheaded. I've sat here and smoked twenty of them in a row, and they do give one exhilaration. That's... the way they're advertised, of course. But other cigarettes, other things, have been advertised that way, too. Only... this time... and the whole world is smoking Verves. They've caught on extremely well. The whole world."

   She said, troubled, "You are queer."

   "Sorry." He crushed out the cigarette carefully and locked his hands together.

More follows, including a suggestion that the cigarettes have some sort of additive, but the subject is dropped in the first half of the novel. In the latter half, it's revealed that the Angel is using Lost House to store marijuana bound for the United States and United Kingdom. It seems a very lucrative trade. Might the drug have something to with Verve? The question is asked, but never answered.

Lost House was the second ever Harlequin, but the publishers pushed it like old pros.

Dope? Sure.

Danger? Ditto.

Dolls? Well, Pamela is described as attractive in the way prospective a mother-in-law might approve. Wees makes something of her playing around with "the soft pink ruffles of her skirt" when speaking to David in the final chapter. That's sexy, I guess. But Pamela's just one doll. The female guests at Lost House include a sad middle-aged widow who has yet to throw off her weeds, elderly Lady Riley, and two older spinster sister twins who live for knitting. 

Pamela's mother often appears in a lacy negligee, though only before her daughter. Is Mrs Leighton the the other doll?

Back cover copy continues the hard sell:

Pamela does not "land at David's feet, showing more in the process than a nice girl would normally show to a strange male." She wears a heavy skirt that approaches the length of a nun's habit. I add that she has sensible walking shoes.

Lost House is not "a fashionable British Columbia retreat for wealthy guests from all over the world;" it is nowhere so exotic, attracting only the dullest the English have to offer.

At end of it all, I found Lost House neither hot nor cold. It's lukewarm at best, despite Mrs Leighton's negligees.

*In fairness, as a romance novel, No Pattern for Life doesn't fit the Ricochet series. I recommend it as a strange romance.

Trivia I: In the preface to the anthology Investigating Women: Female Detectives by Canadian Writers (Toronto: Dundurn, 1995), David Skene-Melvin writes that the novel's royalties helped finance "Lost House," Wees's home in Stouffville, Ontario.

Trivia II: Like Wees, David is a graduate of the University of Alberta. He and his father practice medicine at the University Hospital, Edmonton. 

University Hospital, Edmonton, Alberta, c. 1938

Object: A very early Harlequin, my copy is a fragile thing. The publisher used the same cover in 1954 when reissuing Lost House as book #245, marking the last time the novel saw print. 

Access: Lost House was first published as a book in 1938 by Philadelphia's Macrae-Smith. The following year, Hurst & Blackett published the only UK edition. In 1940, the novel appeared as a Philadelphia Record supplement.

As of this writing, one jacketless copy of the Macrae-Smith edition is being offered online. Price: US$50.00. I'm not sure it's worth it, but do note that the image provided by the bookseller features boards with yellow writing. I believe orange/red (above) to be more common.

The Whitchurch-Stouffville Public Library doesn't hold a single edition of Frances Shelley Wees's twenty-four books.

Related posts:

A Rival for Margaret Millar?

The Return of Frances Shelley Wees
Domestic Suspense in Small Town Ontario
M'Lord, I Am Not Guilty: Title, Cover, Confession

This Necessary Read
Where is Jenny Now?
Fumbling Towards Legacy

Dustiest Bookcase: S is for Slater (not Mitchell)

The Dustiest Bookcase:

Short pieces on books I've always meant to review (but haven't).

The Water-Drinker

Patrick Slater [John Mitchell]
Toronto: Thomas Allen, 1937
149 pages

I read Patrick Slater's The Yellow Briar a few months after moving to southern Ontario. Our new neighbours and friends had read it in school. Another friend, Michael Gnarowski, was preparing a new edition for Dundurn's Voyageur Classics series. Copies were plentiful in our newly adopted corner of the country. It took little effort, little time, and less than thirty dollars to amass a nice little collection of various editions. The new Dundurn edition set me back twice as much as the others combined. 

l-r: the 1933 Thomas Allen edition, the 1963 Macmillan edition, the 1966 Macmillan edition, the 1970 Macmillan edition, and the 2009 Dundurn edition.

My lazy pursuit was encouraged by clippings left by former owners. These were found between the pages of one of the two Thomas Allen copies I own:

I really liked The Yellow Briar, but can't quite remember why. Wish I'd posted a review on this blog. I didn't because these new neighbours and friends were so familiar with he book; it didn't seem neglected or forgotten. As years passed, I realized that the offspring of our new friends and neighbours – closer to me in age – knew nothing of Patrick Slater and The Yellow Briar. 

Slater wasn't really Patrick Slater but a lawyer John Mitchell. The Yellow Briar, sold by the author and his publisher as a memoir, was a hoax. As hinted in the headline of a clipping above – 'Author Who Jailed Self In Spite of Crown Dies' – Mitchell was a troubled soul. This photograph suggests as much:
 

The image comes from yet another clipping – this one from Saturday Night – which I found in the pages of my copy of The Water-Drinker.

Published four years after The Yellow Briar, The Water-Drinker is a collection of verse coming from a man who'd previously published only prose. It begins with a twenty-one-page introduction in which Slater/Mitchell offers a mea culpa, before expounding on literature, poetry, growing old, and purse picking. The thirteen poems that follow are interrupted by nine colour plates featuring paintings by F.H. Varley, Paul Kane, Cornelius Krieghoff, and Maurice Cullen, amongst others. A tenth illustration – uncredited – appears only in black and white:

Might it be by the poet himself?

My copy, purchased in 2010, once belonged to Louis Blake Duff (1 January 1878 - 29 August 1959). It appears to have been a birthday gift, presented on his sixtieth birthday:

Duff was the author of several books and chapbooks, most having to do with the history of southern Ontario. A respected local historian, his death was noted by William Arthur Deacon in the pages of the Globe & Mail:

Dr. Duff deplored what he called the booklessness of Canadians, their disinterest in literature. As a passionate bibliophile – his own library contained 10,000 volumes – he could not help but be depressed by this characteristic which he considered a national trait.

My copy of The Water-Drinker was one of Dr Duff's 10,000 volumes.

It set me back all of $2.50.

Remembering Ted Allan on His Hundredth

Today marks the centenary of Ted Allan’s birth. Though our lives overlapped by more than three decades, the only time I actually laid eyes on the man was at the 1993 Richer Roast. The venue was the Oval Ballroom of the Ritz-Carleton, the very same space that would one day serve to host the Panofsky wedding reception in Barney's Version. 

Would that I could remember Allan's speech. The only bit – and it was a bit – that has remained with me is the end: "Mordecai,” said Allan, turning to the roastee, “do me a favour. Next time someone compliments you on Lies My Father Told Me, would you please correct them."

Laughter.

Two decades after the man's death, it's still for Lies My Father Told Me – as short story, film and play – that Allan is best remembered. So many other works have fallen by the wayside, but there is reason to hope. Where seven years ago not one of his books was in print, we now have two: The Scalpel, The Sword (Dundurn, 2009), the Bethune biography he co-authored with Sidney Gordon, and This Time a Better Earth (U of Ottawa Press, 2015), Allan's 1939 debut novel. The latter is particularly welcome… so rare was it that the author himself didn't own a copy.

In celebration of the day, recognition of the five Ted Allan books that remain out of print. All are worthy of revival, but none more so than Willie, the Squowse. Honestly, how is it possible that it isn't in print?

Love is a Long Shot
Alice K. Doherty [pseud Ted Allan]
Toronto: News Stand Library, 1949

Quest for Pajaro
Edward Maxwell [pseud Ted Allan]
London: Heinemann, 1957

Willie the Squowse
Ted Allan
Illustrated by Quentin Blake
Toronto: McClelland & Stewart, 1978

Love is a Long Shot
Ted Allan
Toronto: McClelland & Stewart, 1984

Don't You Know Anybody Else?
Ted Allan
Toronto: McClelland & Stewart, 1985

Related posts:

An Author as Thespian
A Son's Lies My Father Told Me

Pulp Noir à Montréal

Hugh Garner: Article Lost, Article Found

Toronto: McClelland & Stewart, 1962

Toronto: Ryerson, 1968

Markhan, ON: PaperJacks, 1983

Toronto: Dundurn, 2011

A Bonus:

Regarding the sales of "The Silence On The Shore" [sic] I think it has done remarkably well, considering that its publisher didn't want to sell any copies of it at all. I think, however, that had I not wanted to sell it I would have kept its sales down below 1,400, even if I would have to burn the books. 

     My personal feelings to you are friendly, but from a business and professional point of view I think it better that we do not involve each other with the other any more. 

– Hugh Garner, letter to Jack McClelland, 28 August 1963