The Season's Best Books in Review — A.D. 1915; Featuring the Best Canadian Book Ever Published

The influence of the war upon the literary taste of the public is strikingly illustrated by the increasing demand for more serious books.

— The Globe, 4 December 1915

Can the same be said for our time of war? I'm not so sure, though "The Globe 100: The Best Books of 2015", published last Saturday, assures me that this year's list is "smarter than ever."

Ah, the hubris of the living.

The Great War was heading towards its second Christmas when the Globe published its review of the 143 best books of 1915. Most are pretty much forgotten – The Heart of Philura, anyone? – though some, like W. Somerset Maugham's Of Human Bondage, live on. Canadians don't fair too poorly, taking thirty-two spots. Sadly, our survival rate isn't any better.

Consider The Life of Lord Strathcona and Mount Royal, Beckles Willson's authorized biography of the man who co-founded the Canadian Pacific Railway and once held controlling shares in the Hudson's Bay Company. The Globe informs: "Based upon a mass of material, this record introduces documents which throw new light upon noted transactions in the Northwest."

New light upon noted transactions in the Northwest!

Hold me back.

The advertisement from publisher Cassel,featured on the bottom right of the page announces the title as "THE BOOK OF THE YEAR". Lest you question that claim, consider this: The Globe included the book even though it had not yet been published.

Competition comes in the form of In Pastures Green by farmer, poet and – it needs be noted – Globe contributor Peter McArthur. "Mr. McArthur is among those who have promoted the Dominion to full literary responsibility", sayeth the Globe. "We wisely rejoice in the products of our farms, but there is no more sustaining or enduring product of the farm at Ekfrid than 'In Pastures Green.'"

J.M. Dent and Sons' advert for In Pastures Green more than trumps the one for The Life of Lord Strathcona and Mount Royal:

Sustaining and enduring In Pastures Green has been out of print for nearly seven decades. Of the thirty-two Canadian titles, only two are in print today: Anne of the Island by L.M. Montgomery, described here as the third volume in the "Anne Trilogy", and Winnifred Eaton's Me: A Book of Remembrance. "A much-talked of account of the life of a working girl who is 'up against it' nearly all the time. A sensational revelation of real life", says the Globe.

I've still not made time for Me. In fact, after all these years of the Dusty Bookcase –  here and at Canadian Notes & Queries –  I've yet to review a single book from 1915. Curious… I've covered several from each of the surrounding years. Perhaps it has something to do with this, as noted by the Globe in its introduction to the list:

The hell that is war.

Alberta Gothic

"Cattle"

Winnifred Eaton

New York: A.L. Burt, [1925?]

294 pages

This review now appears, revised and rewritten, in my new book:

The Dusty Bookcase:

A Journey Through Canada's

Forgotten, Neglected, and Suppressed Writing

Available at the very best bookstores and through

Biblioasis, Amazon, Chapters/Indigo, and McNally-Robinson.

Glassco's $9500 Library and the Montreal Eatons

Canadian Notes & Queries number 86 has arrived, bringing with it all kinds of goodness from Caroline Adderson, Mike Barnes, Nigel Beale, Darryl Joel Berger, Steven W. Beattie, Aaron Costain, Evie Christie, Jason Dickson, Nicole Dixon, Emily Donaldson, Sharon English, Alex Good, Finn Harvor, Jeet Heer, Even Jones, David Mason, Ben McNally, Sarah Neville, James Pollock, John Richmond, Mark Sampson and Bruce Whiteman, wrapped in a cover by Seth.

I have two pieces in this issue, the first being a look at John Glassco: A Personal and Working Library, issued in 1982 by Montreal's Word Bookstore. Compiled by Glassco's bibliographer Fraser Sutherland, this cerlox-bound 47-page catalogue offers the poet and pornographer's library en masse:

The Library occupies approximately 29 feet of shelf-space, and comprises 526 books and 88 periodicals – most of them signed and annotated – as well as hundreds of other printed items, letters, and manuscripts. Editions are usually First. Except for books or periodicals published before 1940, condition is usually Fine. On the rare occasions were pages are missing, these are indicated. The price of JOHN GLASSCO: A PERSONAL AND WORKING LIBRARY is Can$9500.

That's right, $9500. And yet only one institution stepped forward. And it wasn't McGill, his alma mater.

The collection was purchased by Queen's University and can be viewed, even by unaccompanied minors, at Special Collections at the W.D. Jordan Library. Select pages from the catalogue can be seen here at my Gentleman of Pleasure blog.

The second contribution is a review of Marion: The Story of an Artist's Model by Winnifred Eaton (a/k/a Onoto Watanna). First published in 1916 as a biography, reissued last year by McGill-Queen's as a novel, it provides a fictionalized account of sister Sara Eaton's youth, along with glimpses of artist father Edward, mother Lotus Blossom, and more than a few of the thirteen other Eaton children.

The Metropolitan, 10 February 1894

The new edition benefits from a fascinating 49-page Introduction by Karen E.H. Skinazi and the inclusion of Henry Hutt's original illustrations.

Rereading the review, I see that I've described the Eatons as "perhaps the most unusual and unconventional family of Victorian Montreal."

I'm now reconsidering the word "perhaps".

Related post:

Beauty Neglected

Cross-posted, in part, at A Gentleman of Pleasure.

Beauty Neglected

From time to time, by which I mean every other day, I receive emails from various online book marketplaces pushing titles that they somehow think I'll be wanting to buy. Most are ignored, but I usually have time for the folks at AbeBooks, who seem alone in recognizing my interests. Their latest – subject line: '30 Beautiful Old Books We'd Buy For the Cover Alone' – points to a visual feast comprised of titles published from the end of the 19th century to the beginning of the 20th. Who would've thought that a volume titled The Book of Bugs could look so attractive?

Among the other beauties is A Japanese Blossom, the 1906 novel by Winnifred Eaton, published under her nom de plume Onoto Watanna. I've written a good deal on Eaton in print, and don't really want to repeat myself here, but I continue to be mystified by the lack of recognition she's received in this fair Dominion. Eaton's story is remarkable on so very many levels, beginning with her birth in 1875 Montreal to an English silk merchant turned landscape painter and his Chinese wife, herself the orphaned child of circus performers. One of fourteen children, Winnifred grew up near poverty, yet managed to become one of the wealthiest Canadian writers of her day. No doubt some inspiration was derived from her older sister Edith, who in recent years has been described repeatedly as the 'mother of Asian American literature'. Winnifred's own literary career began at the age of fourteen with the sale of a short story to Montreal's Metropolitan Magazine. By the fin de siècle she'd embraced Japonisme and, as Onoto Watanna, arrived in New York, where she presented herself as the daughter of an Englishman and a Nagasaki noblewoman. Her second novel, A Japanese Nightingale (1901), sold over 200,000 copies, was adapted to the Broadway stage and inspired a silent picture.

There is a great deal more to Eaton's story, including a career in Hollywood and her return to Canada as the wife of a wealthy Alberta rancher, but it's unlikely that you'll find any trace at your local public library. The Canadian Encyclopedia has no entry on Eaton, nor does she figure in The Oxford Companion to Canadian Literature. However, she is the subject of a very fine biography, Onoto Watanna: The Story of Winnifred Eaton (2001), written by her granddaughter. There's also a biography of her sister, Sui Sin Far / Edith Maude Eaton (1995). Both published by the University of Illinois Press, they're part of an a revival that has seen number of Watanna books reprinted in the United States. To these I recommend the University of Virginia Library's Winnifred Eaton Digital Archive, which features a growing number of her fiction and non-fiction writings. The biographical sketch provided by the site makes no mention of Canada. Perhaps we deserve nothing more.

A good many ugly-looking books have been featured in this blog; consider this small sampling of Watanna titles an attempt at redressing the balance.

A Japanese Nightingale

New York: Harper & Bros., 1901.

The Heart of the Hyacinth

New York: Harper & Bros., 1903.

Daughters of Nijo

New York: Macmillan, 1904.

Tama

New York: Harper & Bros., 1910.