Short pieces on books I've always meant to review (but haven't).
North Overland with Franklin J Macdonald Oxley
New York: Crowell, 1907
286 pages
I'm not sure what's going on here, but the image does remind me of this iconic cover:
I read Bear as a twenty-year-old, and have not revisited.
Do the two novels have much in common?
Doubt it. North Overland was Franklin was first published by the Religious Tract Society. My copy features this bookplate:
I'm a bit peeved. As a boy, my father, an Anglican, was awarded many books for regularity and punctuality at the Church of St John the Baptist, Pointe Claire, Quebec. Walter Scott's The Black Arrow was one, but the novel that made he greatest impression was Number 44 by Harold M Sherman.
Not only that, my father was presented pins recognizing these accomplishment to be worn proudly on his lapel.
I too was raised an Anglican. Regularity and punctuality were not rewarded at my childhood church – St Marys, Kirkland, Quebec – though we children enjoyed juice and cookies after Sunday School.
The 2011 Canadian Census records George Bee (born 1895) as the eldest son of David and Catherine Bee. The Bee family lived at 240 Gerrard Street, now home to the Virginia Hamara Law Office.
I can't quite recall how I came to have George Bee's copy of North Overland with Franklin in my collection, but am fairly certain that I picked it up somewhere in Ontario and paid no more than two dollars. I do remember thinking that the Franklin of the title might just be Sir John Franklin, and that Oxley had penned a fantasy in which the explorer had somehow overcome the terror of HMS Terror and HMS Erebus, and had made his way toward Rupert's Land.
But then it would've been South Overland with Franklin, right?
To be fair – to myself – I wasn't far off. The hero of North Overland with Franklin is the very same John Franklin, though Oxley's adventure imagines the explorer's ill-fated Coppermine Expedition, which ended over three decades before his ill-fated Northwest Passage Expedition began.
Because the former featured a murder, dinners made of boiled boots, and suggestions of cannibalism, North Overland with Franklin might make for an interesting read; remember, it began as a Religious Tract Society publication.
That said, because I believe in placing books in the best hands, I'm eager to return this copy of North Overland with Franklin to the Bee family, whether it's a descendent of George Bee or of one of his siblings: Ethel (b 1894) and Edward (b 1899).
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Short pieces on books I've always meant to review (but haven't).
Old Soldier Frederick Niven London: Collins, 1936 256 pages
Twelve years of The Dusty Bookcase and I have yet to read a single book by Frederick Niven.
It isn't for lack of trying.
Regular readers will remember that I spent good money on an old Collins White Circle edition of The Flying Years, but couldn't make it past it's dull, dull, deathly dull cover.
I did better with The Three Marys – which I bought for its cover – only to give up after reading the publisher's description, in which it's revealed that the hero, portrait painter Robert Barclay, is involved in a rail accident: "Barclay is killed, and the books [sic] ends on this note of tragedy."
Bit of a spoiler, right?
I own only two other Niven titles: Mine Inheritance and Old Soldier. The former is "a story based on the Red River Settlement, Canada," though you wouldn't know it from the jacket of the Collins first edition:
Leaving aside the fact that the clothing is from the wrong century, are those mountains I see?
This leaves Old Soldier, about which I know next to nothing. I say next to nothing because I made the mistake of hunting down 85-year-old reviews. The first mentioned something about a store... and then I smartened up and stopped reading.
What's the book about?
No idea. But I will read this Niven novel! What's more, I'm going to do it this year!
Short pieces on books I've always meant to review (but haven't).
Marjorie's Canadian Winter:
A Story of the Northern Lights
Agnes Maule Machar
Toronto: Briggs, 1906
315 pages
Another winter has come and gone... the twelfth since I found this book at the Stratford Salvation Army Thrift Store. It spent the season on my night table, vying for attention with The Sleeping Bomb,The Terror of the Tar Sands, A Gift to Last, The Wronged Wife, and all kinds of unkind works about Maria Monk. Snubbed yet again, Marjorie's Canadian Winter has been returned to the living room bookshelves.
Miss Machar's most popular novel, I feel it must be read in winter.
Why?
Don't know. After all, I'm always up for hearing "Theme from A Summer Place." Doesn't matter what time of year.
Because I dislike spoilers, I've made a point of skipping over all references to Marjorie's Canadian Winter when reading about Agnes Maule Machar. However, for the purposes of this post, I allowed myself this review of the original edition from the December 24, 1892 number of The Critic:
I can attest to the engravings being neat. Sure looks like Marjorie had fun.
Must admit, I'm intrigued by the reference to her encounters with those "not so satisfactory."
Ah, but I can wait 'til at least December. Spring is here! Besides, I found this today folded between pages 62 and 63:
Short pieces on books I've always meant to review (but haven't).
Westerly Wild Vera Lysenko [pseud Vera Lesik] Toronto: Ryerson, 1956
284 pages
Purchased for $2.50, I was sold by the opening words on the front flap:
WESTERLY WILD, a sort of Canadian Wuthering Heights, grew out of the fascination exerted on the author by the rolling countryside of south-western Saskatchewan...
Six years later, this Vera Lysenko novel continues to collect dust because I still haven't read Wuthering Heights.
Short pieces on books I've always meant to review (but haven't).
The Bells of St. Stephen's
Marian Keith Toronto: McClelland & Stewart, 1922
336 pages
My rule when buying books by Marian Keith is to pay no more than two dollars. I ignored this with The Bells of St. Stephen's, which set me back four dollars. The cover, depicting a young woman with volume in hand, seduced.
I don't know what to make of Marian Keith because I've never read her. She exists in a fog, as do so many once-popular Canadian novelists. Keith was more successful than the vast majority, and yet she's still miles below contemporaries like Gilbert Parker, Ralph Connor, Basil King, and L.M. Montgomery (with whom she co-authored 1934's Courageous Women.) I doubt one of Keith's novels sold as well as Robert E. Knowles' St. Cuthbert's, but her literary career lasted much longer, stretching from Duncan Polite (1906) to The Grand Lady (1960).
I've been meaning to read Keith for years. Is The Bells of St. Stephen's the best place to begin? In Canadian Novelists: 1920-1945 (1946), Clara Thomas suggests that Keith's best is A Gentleman Adventurer (1924).
I've yet to cross paths with anyone who has read Keith, but I'm sure you're out there.
Short pieces on books I've always meant to review (but haven't).
They're in storage as we build our new home.
Patience, please.
One Third of a Bill: Five Short Canadian Plays
Fred Jacob
Toronto: Macmillan, 1925
140 pages
The tenth anniversary of this blog is less than four months away, so how is it that I haven't reviewed a single play? I was, after all, a child star. My involvement in the theatre stretches back to the second grade,when I played Big Billy Goat in a touring production (we once performed at a neighbouring elementary school) of Three Billy Goat's Gruff. In all modesty, I think I earned the role because I had the deepest voice of all the boys.
It hasn't changed since.
Had I not spotted its subtitle, Five Canadian Short Plays, I wouldn't have bought One Third of a Bill. Fred Jacob's name meant nothing to me. Though he once served as dramatic and literary editor of the Mail & Empire, he doesn't feature in The Canadian Encylopedia or W.H. New's Encyclopedia of Literature in Canada. The Oxford Companion to Canadian Literature demonstrates its superiority in devoting a portion of a sentence to the man under the entry "Novels in English: 1920 to 1940":
There were also Victor Lauriston's Inglorious Milton (1934), a mock epic of small-town literati, and the first two novels by Fred Jacob (1882-1926) [sic] of a planned (but never completed) four-part satire of Canadian life in the first quarter of the twentieth-century: Day Before Yesterday (1925) about the decline of upper-class domination in a small Ontario town, and Peevee (1928), about the posturing and affectations of a rising middle class.
I've since learned that the small town in Day Before Yesterday was modelled on Elora, Ontario, in which Jacob was born and raised. A roman à clef, it didn't go down well with the locals, as reflected in this online listing from Thunder Bay's Letters Bookshop:
Macmillan of Canada, Toronto, 1925. Hardcover. Condition: Very good plus. 1st Edition. 320pp; gilt black filled cloth, lacking jacket; 197 x 131 x 41 mm. The author's controversial second book, the introductory novel in a projected series of four studies of 19th-century rural Ontario communities; preceded the same year, by a collection of plays. A native of Elora, Fred Jacob (1882-1928), lacrosse afficianado, was employed as a Toronto Mail & Empire sports writer at the time of publication. Perceiving the story to be uncomplimentary to their forefathers, residents back home erupted in a torrent of condemnation for book & author alike, which inevitably led to less than favourable reviews. The author had nearly completed the somewhat redeeming second volume, PeeVee (1928), at the time of his untimely demise. Ink inscription on ffe, dated Jan 31st, 1926. Light wear to boards; with a touch of waterstain to a portion of the book-block at upper tip. Exceedingly scarce.
Exceeding scarce is right!
The copy described above is one of only two listed for sale online. Unsurprisingly, the Wellington County Library, which serves Elora, doesn't have a copy (or any other Jacob title). Seems a candidate for acquisition. Here's the link to the Letters Bookshop listing:
Incidentally, Letters gets right what The Oxford Companion gets wrong: the year of Jacob's death. Here's how the sad event was reported in the Mail & Empire:
Short pieces on books I've always meant to review (but haven't).
They're in storage as we build our new home.
Patience, please.
Kak, The Copper Eskimo
Vilhjalmur Stefanson and Violet Irwin
New York: Macmillan, 1924
253 pages
Yes, I is for Irwin... and not for Stefansson. My reason for buying this book has everything to do with her and nothing to do with him. To be honest, I'm not much interested in Kak, the Copper Eskimo – I bought it because I saw it. The Violet Irwin book I really want to read is her first novel, The Human Desire (Boston: Small, Maynard, 1913). I've never come across a copy and have never read a review. All I know about The Human Desire comes from advertisements for the 1919 Hollywood adaptation.
Silent films took great liberties with source material. I don't know how faithful Hollywood's 1919 Human Desire was to Irwin's novel, but I'm interested in finding out.
The McGill Daily
10 October 1919
I've seen dozens of films at The Imperial – my favourites being The King of Comedy and After Hours – sadly, I was seven decades too late for Human Desire.
Fun fact:Kak, the Copper Eskimo was never adopted by Hollywood, but it was translated into Yiddish: Ḳeḳ - der ḳleyner esḳimos (Ṿilne : Naye yidishe shul, 1939). The only copy of which I know is held in New York at the Yivo Institute for Jewish Research.
I've had the luxury of reading Jean-Charles Harvey in translation. His second novel, Les Demi-civilisés, has twice appeared in English-language editions: Sackcloth for Banner by Lukin Barette and Fear's Folly by John Glassco.
That's it.
Harvey published eighteen other books during his lifetime, but not one has been translated. I find this odd in that he wasn't unknown amongst English-speaking Canadians. Harvey spoke to audiences across the country. His opinion pieces appeared – translated, I'm guessing – in the Maclean's and the Globe & Mail.
The Globe & Mail
10 January 1944
A light in the darkness of Maurice Duplessis' Quebec, Jean Paré dubbed him "bootlegger d'intelligence en période de prohibition." To Pierre Chalout, he was "grand-père de la révolution tranquille." I was born in the midst of that revolution... a revolution for which he had fought and risked everything.
I've read all Harvey's novels: Marcel Faure, Les Demi-civilisés, Les Paradis de sable, and
La Fille du silence, in French, but not his non-fiction. Pourquoi je suis antiséparatiste appeared near the end of his seventy-five years. Even at the time, it must have seemed an inadvisable career move. But then Harvey was never one to stand down; Les Demi-civilisés, is proof enough of that.
Short pieces on books I've always meant to review (but haven't).
They're in storage as we build our new home.
Patience, please.
O Master Caliban!
Phyllis Gotlieb
New York: Harper & Row, 1976
244 pages
A childhood enthusiasm, I gave up on science fiction at about the time this book was published, which pretty much explains how it is that I had no idea Phyllis Gotlieb wrote sci-fi novels. Before coming across a copy of her first, Sunburst, at last fall's Friends of the St Marys Public Library book sale. I knew her only as a poet. I've never read her verse, but the fact that it had been published by Oxford University Press holds considerable weight.
O Master Caliban! was Gotlieb's third novel. I found this pristine, seemingly unread first edition one cold January day at Attic Books. The price - $3.00 - encouraged purchase, but I hesitated after reading the first sentence of the front flap:
Esther, an intelligent, articulate, motherly gibbon; Yigal, a large, grumpy white goat who talks; and Sven, a moody young man with four arms, are the protagonists of this fast-paced and delightful novel.
Oh, dear.
I bought it just the same, but can't bring myself to start in on the thing. The cover of the 1979 Seal mass market paperback all but guarantees I never will.
Short pieces on books I've always meant to review (but haven't).
They're in storage as we build our new home.
Patience, please.
Right Now Would Be a Good Time to Cut My Throat
Paul Fulford
Richmond Hill, ON: Pocket, [1972]
pages
The debut novel by Paul Fulford – commonly, "Paul A. Fulford" – about whom I know next to nothing. True, the book's author bio consumes the back cover, but can it be trusted?
Fulford is described as a magazine editor without identifying the publication. He's said to have written magazine articles, but I've yet to find one. Brochures? Speeches? Haven't most of us written these at one time or another?
Fulford is a subject of further research, which is not to say it hasn't begun. I've managed to track down a copy of Should a Scotsman Take Off His Kilt When He Meets a Lady?, published in 1969 by Young & McCarthy.
It was the publisher's only book.
I've also found seven letters Fulford wrote to the Globe & Mail, the earliest (26 March 1965) concerning a crosswalk accident that involved Toronto's Chief of Police. Others focus on problems with parking at the Canadian National Exhibition, Soviet Premier Alexei Kosygin's 1971 Ottawa visit, the Oak Island Mystery, and humorist and columnist Richard Needham (whom Fulford criticizes as unfunny and lazy). The last, published in 6 January 1973, deals with dogs:
Never mind.
Given Fulford's association with Pocket Books, an American mass market branch plant, this letter published on 6 August 1971, is by far the most interesting:
As far as I've been able to determine, Fulford wrote just one paid piece for the Globe & Mail, "Can Penguins Show How To Solve the Generation Gap" (16 March 1971), an op-ed in which he's described as "a supply teacher at Forest Hill Junior High."
It's every bit as funny as Needham.
Barman, labourer, teacher, farmhand, I don't doubt that Fulford had been them all. Initially, I was dismissive about the claim that written of movie scripts, "Unproduced," I'd thought, until I came across a "Paul Fulford" as one of four screenwriters credited in the 1971 Canadian prison drama "I'm Going to Get You... Elliott Boy" (aka Caged Men Plus One Woman).
"Featuring today's bright young stars Ross Stephenson and Maureen McGill," according to the trailer, "this story was torn from today's headlines and actually filmed inside the walls of a modern and active penitentiary." "It seems a rip-off of John Herbert's 1967 play Fortune and Men's Eyes, which happened to have been released as a feature film in the very same month.
I wonder what happened to bright young stars Ross Stephenson and Maureen McGill, just as I wonder what became of Paul A. Fulford. As far as I can tell, he published only one more book, Who's Got the Bastard Pope [sic] (Markham, ON: PaperJacks, 1978). Surprisingly uncommon, I've been looking for it for years, but this small image spotted online is the closest I've got:
As for Fulford being married to a writer named Dorothy Parker... Well, you can't make that stuff up.
Short pieces on books I've always meant to review (but haven't).
They're in storage as we build our new home.
Patience, please.
Memory's Wall
Flora McCrae Eaton
Toronto: Clarke Irwin, 1956
213 pages
The Bombardier Guide to Canadian Authorsplaces Flora McCrae Eaton as second only to Malcolm Frye. Both writers transcend the boundaries of our literature: Frye rates 6½ out of a possible five skidoos, while Lady Eaton is an even six. According to the Guide, Morley Callaghan is a third the writer she is, and yet I've never read Lady Eaton's work.
Memory's Wall was Flora McCrae Eaton's second and last book. The first, Rippling Rivers: My Diary of a Camping Holiday, was published in 1920 by the T. Eaton Company, the department store headed by husband Sir John Craig Eaton. That just two books propelled her to such heights in the Bombardier Guide speaks to her talent.
Before moving to St Marys, Ontario, our home these past ten years, I'd never seen a copy of Memory's Wall. They're not at all uncommon in this small town. My copy, purchased four blocks down the street, set me back a dollar.
It's signed.
The Eatons were once prominent in St Marys; Lady Eaton's father-in law, Timothy, had a store on Queen Street, as did his brother Robert. They stand with celebrated violinist Nora Clench (Lady Streeton) and Arthur Meighen as the town's most famous residents. The latter, our ninth prime minister, provided a forward to Memory's Wall.
It begins: "This book is truly a Canadian product." That's as far as I've made it.
Short pieces on books I've always meant to review (but haven't).
They're in storage as we build our new home.
Patience, please.
Deeper Into the Forest
Roy Daniells
Toronto: McClelland & Stewart, 1948 72 pages
A thing of beauty, and so a joy forever, I bought my pristine copy of Deeper Into the Forest three years ago for fifteen dollars. That price – less than a can of President's Choice coffee – speaks ill of this country's recognition of its literature.
But who am I to judge? I still haven't read Daniells' collection.
Deeper Into the Forest holds the distinction of being the very first Indian File Book, a series that would include three Governor General's Award-winners: James Reaney's The Red Heart (1949), James Wreford Watson's Of Time and the Lover (1950), and P.K. Page's The Metal and the Flower (1956). The ninth and last last Indian File Book, John Glassco's The Deficit Made Flesh (1958), is the one I know the best. For a time, Leonard Cohen's The Spice Box of Earth was under consideration as the tenth title.
Indian File Books had uniform dust jackets; the series name had to do with the boards hidden underneath each. All nine were adaptations of designs by "West Coast and Plains Indians" by WASP Torontonian Paul Arthur.
Short pieces on books I've always meant to review (but haven't).
They're in storage as we build our new home.
Patience, please.
The Village of Souls
Philip Child
Toronto: Ryerson, 1948
294 pages
I've long championed Child, praising God's Sparrows and Mr. Ames Against Time here and elsewhere. The Village of Souls was his debut novel. It was first published in 1933 by Thornton Butterworth of London, England, a full fifteen years before there was a Canadian edition. Ryerson went some way in making up for the delay. This may be the publisher's most beautiful book.
Roloff Beny, a man I'd known only as a photographer, provides the cover and the illustrations that open each chapter.
Child wrote just five novels. I haven't read this one for the simple reason that it's set in seventeenth-century New France. As mentioned a couple of weeks back, I'm not drawn to historical fiction. Should I be giving The Village of Souls a chance? According to Ryerson, I'm missing out on a novel that "will live as a Canadian classic."
The Ryerson edition of The Village of Souls was published seventy years ago. The novel hasn't seen print since.
Short pieces on books I've always meant to review (but haven't).
They're in storage as we build our new home.
Patience, please.
My Lady Greensleeves
Constance Beresford-Howe
New York: Ballantine, 1955
220 pages
The author's fourth novel – and lone historical novel – My Lady Greensleeves holds the distinction of being her worst received. Eighteen years passed before she returned with her fifth, The Book of Eve.
In the three-page "About Constance Beresford-Howe" tacked to the end of the novel, the author reveals that My Lady Greensleeves was inspired by a sixteenth-century scandale involving Anne Hungerford, husband Sir William Hungerford, and William Darrell, who was accused of being Anne's lover.
Beresford-Howe uses Anne as a model for the novel's Avys Winter; Sir William is Piers Winter, and Durrell becomes Avys's kissing cousin Henry Brandon.
I don't much care for historical fiction, but regret that I've not read this one. It would be interesting to see just how much the author drew from history. Sir William Hunderford's father was beheaded for violating the Buggery Act of 1533. Does Piers Winters' papa meet the same fate? All evidence indicates that William Durrell committed infanticide at the birth of a child he'd fathered with a servant girl. He was accused of tossing the newborn into a fire.
Kudos to the cover artist for depicting the heroine in green sleeves.
A writer, ghostwriter, écrivain public, literary historian and bibliophile, I'm the author of Character Parts: Who's Really Who in CanLit (Knopf, 2003), and A Gentleman of Pleasure: One Life of John Glassco, Poet, Translator, Memoirist and Pornographer (McGill-Queen's UP, 2011; shortlisted for the Gabrielle Roy Prize). I've edited over a dozen books, including The Heart Accepts It All: Selected Letters of John Glassco (Véhicule, 2013) and George Fetherling's The Writing Life: Journals 1975-2005 (McGill-Queen's UP, 2013). I currently serve as series editor for Ricochet Books and am a contributing editor for Canadian Notes & Queries. My most recent book is The Dusty Bookcase (Biblioasis, 2017), a collection of revised and expanded reviews first published here and elsewhere.
