Showing posts with label Hilliard. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Hilliard. Show all posts

29 December 2025

The Three Best Reads of 2025 (two are in print!)



An annus horribilis, wouldn't you say? Strange, too! Never thought I'be be flying the flag of Greenland from the porch of our Upper Canadian home. 

This has also been an unusual twelve months for the Dusty Bookcase in that two of this year's top three reads are actually in print!

Huzzah!


Douglas Durkin's 1930 novel Mr. Gumble Sits Up, reviewed here in 2012 so disappointed that a full thirteen years passed before I got around to The Magpie; this despite having been given a copy by a reader of this blog. He recommended it, suggesting it as the Great Canadian Post-Great War Novel. I think he's right.

First published in 1923 by Hodder & Stoughton, it's currently available here from Invisible Publishing.

Related to Durkin, quite literally, is future wife Martha Ostenso and her award-winning 1925 novel Wild Geese.

Was Durkin the co-author? Evidence more than suggests so.

Will we ever know the extent of his contribution? I expect so.

Do I want to get into it? No, I do not. 

Aging copies of the 2008 New Canadian Library edition are still available for purchase from Penguin Random House. The cover, an abomination, was clearly created by someone who knew nothing about the novel. Who signed off on it, I wonder.


Reuben Ship's The Investigator, a 1956 adaptation of his then-two-year-old radio play of the same name, rounds out the top three best reads. I enjoyed this book more than any other read this year. It made me laugh, and is as relevant a commentary on American politics as it was seven decades ago. 

If I could revive just one of the out-of-print books read this year, The Investigator would be it. However, tradition dictates I select another two books deserving a return to print. And so:

A case can be made for The Salt-Box, her Leacock award-winning 1951 debut, but I consider A View of the Town (1954) to be Jan Hilliard's first true novel. It concerns the approaching sesquicentenary of a Nova Scotia town and the rivalry between the heads of its founding families. The lightest of the novelist's five novels, should it also have won the Leacock? It was up against Joan Walker's Pardon My Parka, which I aim to read next year.

Will let you know.


Winnifred Eaton's second novel as "Onoto Watanna," and her second novel overall, A Japanese Nightingale (1901) was the Montreal author's big commercial breakthrough, I liked it a lot, and was surprised to find that it has not been caught up in the wave of things Eaton – Winnifred and sister Edith –  that has swept through academe these last few decades.

Returning to the in print, three more titles figure, beginning with The Weird World of Wes Beattie (1963), the first book read and reviewed this year.


Had it not been for the good folks at New York publishers Felony and Mayhem, this bit o' fun would've made it to the list of three books most deserving of a return to print. That said, I do wish F&M would stop pushing The Weird World of Wes Beattie as "The First Truly CANADIAN Mystery."

It's nowhere close.


Stephen Leacock's Arcadian Adventures of the Idle Rich (1914) is still in print. The fifteen-year-old copies New Canadian Library edition sitting in the Penguin Random House warehouse have a better cover than Wild Geese, but I recommend the Tecumseh Press Canadian Critical Edition edition edited by D.M.R. Bentley.


Finally, we have Charles G.D. Roberts' The Heart of the Ancient Wood (1900). This was was the most disappointing read of the year, but only because I remembered liking it so much as a young golden blonde university student. This old grizzled guy saw it quite differently.


The Heart of the Ancient Wood is in print today as part of the the Formac Fiction Treasures series.


The Investigator aside, it's no great shame that the rest are out of print. Robert G. Collin's Tolerable Levels of Violence (1983) was interesting for its depiction of a dystopian North America in which law and order has collapsed. It stands in stark contrast with Rev Hugh Pedley's Looking Forward (1913), which imagines a futuristic near-Utopian Canada brought about by the unification of most Christian denominations. Expo 67 obsessives – I'm one! – will want to hunt down copies of A Fair Affair (1967), Paul Champagne's lone novel.

Regrets? Well, I was looking forward to reading They Have Bodies, the 1925 debut novel by Barney Allen (aka Sol Allen), but somehow misplaced my copy. I found it only a few days ago.

Resolutions, by which I mean reading resolutions, I have but one. Since 2009, when I began this journey through Canada's forgotten, neglected and suppressed writing, I've read and reviewed 460 books, barely thirty percent of which were penned by women.

In the New Year, I'll be reading and reviewing books by women only. No male authors. Barney Allen will have to wait.

Should be interesting.

I'm looking forward to it.

Wishing you all a Happy New Year. I'm confident that it will be happier one.

Really, I am.

Related posts:



Posted by Brian Busby at 6:30 AM 4 comments
Labels: , , , , , , , , , , ,

26 December 2025

The Ten Best Book Buys of 2025 (and four gifts!)



This year, Simon Thomas of Stuck in a Book and Tea or Books fame made a fourth stab at what he refers to as "Project 24," his goal being to purchase only twenty-four books "for myself" throughout the year. The "for myself" bit is important. Why deprive friends?

As most of my books are stored in one of our outbuildings – there's no way they would all fit in the house – I chose to follow Simon's example. My Project 24 had a different carve-out: I would not be counting books purchased at a certain charity shop in nearby Smiths Falls. My justification for the exception had to do with my support of the charity... and, admittedly, the ridiculously low prices. One 2024 visit yielded three signed Margaret Atwood first editions from the 'seventies for two dollars in total.

When June hit I was feeling quite proud of my myself. I'd purchased just eight books. I'd been picky, even at the charity shop, Between Friends/Entre Amis being my only purchase.


All fell apart two days later when I visited a different charity shop, this one in Brockville, where I came across twelve seemingly unopened Folio Society Anthony Trollope novels at $2.50 each. I bought the lot. This meant that to get back on track I would have to keep my wallet in check until November.

Of course, I paid no mind to that constraint, continuing apace until late August when contractors appeared at our door, bringing the year's book buying to an abrupt end

Home renovations will do that.

I ended up purchasing twenty-nine books in 2025, which is far from a disgrace when one takes into account the twelve Trollopes. This year's list of best buys is atypical in that it features two Canadian books I already owned, and another that is Canadian in title only: 

The Victors
Robert Barr
New York: Stokes, 1901

There are real bargains to be had with Robert Barr. Most titles listed online are dirt cheap – so cheap that booksellers can't be bothered to provide a photo. Such was the case with this novel. I have no idea what it is about, but the subtitle, A Romance of Yesterday Morning & This Afternoon, intrigues.
The Girl from Toronto
Hugh Clevely
London:
   Amalgamated, 1954

A last minute addition to an order placed with a UK bookseller, the title caught my eye. Hugh Clevely was a Brit. Nothing in the two-columned 64-pages suggests he ever so much as visited Toronto. But that cover!
Lantern Marsh
Beaumont S. Cornell
Toronto: Ryerson, 1923

A novel set in a "provincial city" modeled on Brockville, Ontario, I'd been looking for a copy since buying a home in the area seven years ago. Cornell was born in nearby Athens Township and became a leading figure in cancer research. The jacket promises a "motif of woman-interest introduced in a rather unusual way." Intriguing!

Murder in a Road Gang
Hugh Cresswell
London: Sampson Low,
   Marston, 1936

Long a subject of interest, I tracked down a copy of this early Canadian murder mystery, likely the very first to be set on the Prairies. Illicit drugs figure!


Hearts and Faces
John Murray Gibbon
New York: John Lane, 1916

The scarce debut novel from the same man who would one day write the brilliant Pagan Love (1922).  This one appears to have been inspired by the Parisian art world. I'll let you know. A fortuitous eBay find, I was surprised and delighted to find that the copy I received was inscribed by the author.

A View of the Town
Jan Hilliard [Hilda
   Kay Grant]
New York: Abelard-
   Schulman, 1954

I already owned a copy of Nelson, Foster & Scott first Canadian edition, but this was signed! The author's first true novel, it is one of only two set in Nova Scotia, the author's home province. 

Trespass Against None
Eric Cecil Morris
Montreal: Whitcombe &
   Gilmour, 1950

Morris should be remembered for having co-written 1965's The Squeaking Wheel, but that bigoted screed is as forgotten as his quirky debut novel A Voice is Calling (1947). I was going on about Morris to a friend when I remembered this second novel. The only copy listed online was signed. An easy sale.

Hugh Pedley
Toronto: William Briggs, 1913

Early 20th-century Christian science fiction inspired in part by early 19th-century Washington Irving, in Looking Forward a pious man of science hibernates for decades, awakening to a Canada made utopian by the union of its Protestant denominations.

Sister Woman
J.G. Sime
London: Grant Richards,
   1919

This book is in horrible condition, but is so very rare that I had to rescue it. The Quebec bookseller had no idea what he had.

Unrecognized in its day, the novel has since been returned to print by Tecumseh Press (sadly, also unrecognized).

Anything Could Happen!
Toronto: Longmans, 1961
Phyllis Brett Young

A thing of beauty, I first purchased a copy in Toronto six years ago. This memoir of sorts inspired by a summer spent as a girl in Muskoka is not only signed by the author but also inscribed by her mother as a gift to an English relative. 



Twenty-twenty-five brought four generous donations to the Dusty Bookcase:


The Great Canadian Novel
Harry J. Boyle
Toronto: PaperJacks, 1973

A novel I've been meaning to read for over forty years, if only because of the title. When my parents were in university, both Bonheur d'occasion and Two Solitudes were promoted as the Great Canadian Novel. Fifth Business was mentioned most often during my own university years. What are the kids being told today, I wonder.

I have my doubts that The Great Canadian Novel "lives up to its title," as the late Peter C. Newman claimed, but aim to find out. 

Robert Stevenson: Engineer and Sea Builder
Kay Grant [Hilda Kay Grant]
New York: Meredith, 1969

A gift from the author's literary executor, Robert Stevenson was the second of the author's two biographies, the first being  Where the copy of A View of the Town above is signed "Jan Hilliard." this book is signed "Kay Grant." An accomplished lighthouse engineer, Stevenson was the grandfather of Robert Louis Stevenson. 


Beside Still Waters
Edna Jaques
Toronto: Thomas Allen, 1939

This summer, my friend Forrest Pass fed my Edna Jaques obsession with a copy of the poet's fifth collection. Seventy-five titles in total, of those I've read 'To a Radio' is my favourite.


The Poetry of Robert Henri Alphonse McGee
Bob McGee
Sherbrooke, QC: GGEL, 2025

My interest in Bob McGee can be traced back to the 2023 fiftieth anniversary of Véhicule Press. The poet's Three Dozen Sonnets & Fast Drawings was the publisher's very first book. Imagine my surprise in being contacted by Libbey Griffith asking whether I'd like a copy of this new collection.

Would I!

An inscribed copy arrived in my mailbox a couple of weeks later. It's a beautifully produced collection, featuring Three Dozen Sonnets & Fast Drawings and McGee's 1977 follow-up Shanty-Horses, James Bay Poems, along with the previously unpublished 'The Labovrs of Alphonsvs' and 'Votive Haiku,' interspersed with colour illustrations. The cover painting and author portrait are by Libbey Griffith.

I'll be making a second Project 24 attempt in 2026... even though my Abebooks shopping basket holds eighty-nine books.

Thanks to my beautiful wife Anyès for the photo of those Trollopes. 

Posted by Brian Busby at 6:30 AM 0 comments
Labels: , , , , , , , , , , ,

24 July 2025

Sunshine Scandals of a Little Town



A View of the Town
Jan Hilliard [Hilda Kay Grant]
Toronto: Nelson, Foster & Scott, 1954
269 pages

There is no town of Inverness on Nova Scotia's mainland. That I wasn't sure says as much of my shaky knowledge of the Maritimes as it does the author's talent. Her Inverness seems real. At first, I thought it might have been inspired by an actual town – as Southport in Hilliard's Miranda (1960) is modeled on Yarmouth – but I've since come to realize that it is based on no one town, rather seventy or eighty of them.

The history of Inverness is important to the plot. It was on 15 May 1781 that Captain Joshua Ward of Virginia landed on Nova Scotia's western shore, taking possession of five hundred acres of virgin soil he'd been awarded for his loyalty to the Crown. Two months later, the immigrant ship Holly arrived from Scotland bearing the Mackays, Fifes, Camerons, Loves, Leckeys, and Macdonalds. The leader of the expedition, Fergus Mackay, who'd spent much of the voyage below deck "guarding" the scotch, emerged in time to yell "I name thee Inverness!"


A View of the Town is not a historical novel, it takes place in 1930 as the sesquicentenary of Inverness approaches. Simon Ward is troubled. Pioneer Day, which celebrates the arrive of great-great-grandfather Joshua, has long been in the shadow of the Holly Day celebration of the Highlanders' arrival. This is easily understandable, after all, the Scottish ship brought the Mackays, Fifes, Camerons, Loves, Leckeys, and Macdonalds, whereas Joshua Ward brought only his family, crew, and a dozen slaves:
"The Wards, who had a weakness for begetting females, were outnumbered in no time."
Simon himself has two offspring, both female. Primrose, named for her late mother, is the eldest. An unmarried innocent of twenty-six, she
spends her days indoors caring for her skin and reading Ruth Fielding novels. Helen, Prim's younger sister, is the more grounded of the two, though recent history suggests otherwise. Wed at nineteen to Denis Cameron, son of the wealthy foundry-owning Camerons, she was abandoned a year later. Her estranged husband is thought to be in California trying to paint. 

Simon is trying to write. He has spent the past two decades working on a history of Inverness in a small octagonal room perched atop the otherwise three-storey Ward family home. The only intrusion he allows comes in late afternoon when the women of the house bring tea. Prim and Helen take their turns, as do Simon's sister-in-law Marlow, and housekeeper Katharine Macdonald (known to all as Katie Wee Duncan):
Nobody had ever caught him actually seated at his desk writing. He might be found taking a nap or reading a book, looking at something in the town, or simply waiting.
Simon means to set things right. Great-great-grandfather Joshua is the true founder of Inverness. It was the Ward family that built the foundation of this proud Nova Scotia town. Neighbour Mary Mackay, president of the Inverness Argus Society, wouldn't dare challenge Simon on this view – she's far too savvy. The play between the two in the months leading to the Pioneer and Holly Day sesquicentennial celebrations is something to see, but there's so much more.

There's Helen's failed marriage, of course. But what of spinster aunt Marlow, who lives in the Ward home next door to the fiancé who threw her over? That old beau went on to father Ian Cameron, Helen's missing husband. Unmarried Katie Wee Duncan, the Ward's housekeeper and cook, is the mother of Rose, who is Mary Mackay's unacknowledged granddaughter. Newly arrived lawyer Percy Mattheson divides his attention between Mary's daughter Florence and Prim Ward until the former runs off with her sister's husband. 

Capping it all off is a climactic scene clearly inspired by "The Sinking of the Mariposa Belle" (aka "The Marine Excursions of the Knights of Pythias"). Harmless fun, A View of the Town is the most gentle of Hilliard's five novels in that no one dies and there are several happy endings. The black humour, very much present in the others, is here pale grey. This 23 October 1954 Globe & Mail ad is the very example of truth in advertizing:


Trivia I: Inverness, Nova Scotia is located on the western shore of Cape Breton. The Inverness of A View of the Town is described as being on the mainland, some one hundred miles north of Halifax. 

Trivia II: Prim's Ruth Fielding novels are just the beginning! Early in the novel, much to her horror, Marlow discovers a copy of Lady Chatterley's Lover hidden under the mattress of Helen's bed. Confronting her niece, Marlow threatens to burn it, but puts the marches away when Helen tells her that it belongs to Mary Mackay's daughter Florence.

About the author:


Sadly, the author would never write or illustrate a travel book.

Object and Access: A green/grey hardcover, split-run with American publishing house Abelard-Schulman (for whom the author worked as a fiction editor). The jacket illustration is credited to George Thompson about whom I know nothing. I bought my copy in early 2024 from a southern Ontario bookseller. Price: $15. I purchased a signed Abelard-Schulman edition early this year. Price: US$30. It is guaranteed to place on my 2025 list of best book buys.


You too can own a signed copy! As of this writing a Calgary bookseller is offering not one but two at $40 apiece!

Get 'em while you can!


Posted by Brian Busby at 6:33 AM 0 comments
Labels: , , , , , ,

20 March 2025

Dusty CanLit Winter Reviews


Blogs. 

They were done in by social media, right?

In my own small way I helped hasten the decline. Back in 2011, after years of reluctance, I was encouraged to set up a Facebook account so as to promote A Gentleman of Pleasure, my biography of John Glassco. Did the effort sell a copy or two? Perhaps, though I very much doubt it sold three.

I quit Facebook in January after watching Mark Zuckerberg at Trump's second inauguration. If interested, you can now find me here on Bluesky.

I've been reading blogs for thirty years now. Most of my favourites are no longer, but not necessarily for want of effort. The blog I miss the most is Ron Scheer's Buddies in the Saddle, devoted to the "frontier West in history, myth, film, and popular fiction." Next month marks the tenth anniversary of Ron's death. We never met, but he taught me a great deal through his posts and in the comments he left to my own. Though an American, he wrote a lot about the history, myth, film, and popular fiction of Western Canada.

This is all to say that I've found blogs richer and more fulfilling than any found on a social media platform. So, this year, in appreciation of other bloggers I'll be sharing seasonal roundups of links to reviews of old Canadian books from favourite blogs.

Now in its eighteenth year, Jean-Louis Lessard's Laurentiana, is the very best online source for information on French-language Canadian literature. This winter saw ten titles added to the nine hundred reviewed thus far:

Leaves & Pages has long been a favourite, and not only because of a shared interest in the works of William C. Heine, author of The Last Canadian and The Swordsman [aka The Sea Lord]. The Leaves & Pages review of Anne Cameron's South of an Unnamed Creek always raises a smile. 



Back in 2005, Olman Feelyus set himself the goal of of reading at least fifty books per annum. Some years he succeeds, some he does not, but lately he's been on a real tear... which means more reviews! He's up to fourteen already, three of which are Canadian. His review of the old NCL edition of Roughing It in the Bush ranks amongst my faves. Happy twentieth anniversary to Olman's Fifty!
Roughing It in the Bush - Susanna Moodie
The Narratives of Fugitive Slaves in Canada - Benjamin Drew
The Luck of Ginger Coffey - Brian Moore 

The Pulp and Paperback Fiction Reader has a real talent for finding CanLit obscurities. Consider its most recent post, which looks at the 25 April 1933 edition of Short Stories. The issue features an H. Bedford-Jones short story and a novella, 'The Trained Cow Kills,' by Saskatchewan newspaperman Geoffrey Hewelcke (aka "Hugh Jeffries"). As far as actual books go, we have a review this uncommon title:
Riders of the Badlands - Thomas P. Kelley 

Moving south of the border, The Invisible Event shared a recent discovery of the Screech Owls series. Given the review, I'm feeling confident that there will be more Screech Owls reviews to come.

Murder at Hockey Camp - Roy MacGregor 

Mystery*File echoed Leaves & Pages' appreciation of Ross Macdonald:


Paperback Warrior was so brave as to take on the third of New Brunswick boy W.E.D. Ross's thirty-eight Dark Shadows novels. Last autumn, I tackled number nineteen. 


In January, J F Norris of Pretty Sinister returned after a year's hiatus with a 2024 recap of his reading. It includes a positive review of Ontario boy Hopkins Moorhouse's second novel The Gauntlet of Alceste, a 1921 mystery set in New York.


Vintage Pop Fictions reviewed Buccaneer Blood, the twelfth title in the sixteen-volume H. Bedford-Jones Library from American publisher Altus Press:

Returning home, I would be remiss in not recognizing Fly-By-Night. No reviews, but the research it has shared on Canadian paperbacks of the 'forties and 'fifties these past sixteen years has proven invaluable:

For the record, I wrote only five reviews of old Canadian books this past season, all of which were posted on this blog:
More this spring!

Keep 'em coming!

Herbert Joseph Moorhouse
24 April 1882, Kincardine Township, Ontario
9 January 1960, Vancouver, BC

RIP

Related posts:
Posted by Brian Busby at 5:01 AM 0 comments
Labels: , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , ,

26 December 2024

The Very Best Reads of 2024: Hilliard's Hat-Trick


With five days left in 2024, there's little chance I'll read and review another neglected book before the calendar turns... and so, the summary!

This was an unusual year for the Dusty Bookcase in that nearly half the books covered – twelve of the twenty-five – were published over a century ago. I don't know that I've reached half that number in the past. This years titles span 173 years, from Major John Richardson's Hardscrabble; Or, The Fall of Chicago (1850) to Richardson biographer David Richard Beasley's Canadian Authors You Should Know (2023). The former is the earliest paperback in my collection; Mark Breslin's Son of a Meech: The Best Brian Mulroney Jokes (1991), also read this year, is the ugliest in both appearance and content.


The best-looking book I've read in the past twelve months is the 1875 Lee & Sheppard edition of The Lily and the Cross by James De Mille. Coincidentally, De Mille's A Strange Manuscript Found in a Copper Cylinder was the most beautiful read last year.

To tweak the early Chapters slogan, great looks are just the beginning. The Dusty Bookcase has always been more about content than appearance. I write this, despite the near certainty that the jackets for this year's list of the three books most deserving of reissue were illustrated by the author herself:

The Jameson Girls
Jan Hilliard
   [Hilda Kay Grant]
Toronto: Nelson, Foster &
   Scott, 1956

The first of the Nova Scotian's books to be set in Ontario, this one concerns four women brought together by the imminent death of their father, once a successful rumrunner. It's about them, not him. 

Miranda
Jan Hilliard
   [Hilda Kay Grant]
New York: Abelard-Schulman,
   1960

This was the very best novel I read this year. The titular character is the focal point, though her story is told through her daughter Rose. An servant in London, in Canada Miranda tweaks her past and takes on airs, while Rose grows to see through it all.

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

Her fifth in ten years, this is the author's final novel. Though Hillard lived a further three decades, she wrote only three more books; all were non-fiction, all were published in the 'sixties.



Sadly, of all the books covered, only one is in print today:


Yellow-Wolf & Other Tales of the Saint Lawrence, Jane Brierley's Governor General's Award-winning 1990 translation of Philippe-Joseph Aubert de Gaspé's posthumous Divers (1893). Copies can be purchased directly from publisher Véhicule Press through this link.


I was tempted to include The Missing Chums (1928), the fourth Hardy Boys book penned by Ontario boy Leslie McFarlane, but that would've been cheating. The edition being flogged today was rewritten in 1962 by James Buechler. As I understand, all that's left of the original is the title. 

This year, I was involved in the publication of only one book, the Ricochet rerelease of Sugar-Puss on Dorchester Street with new cover and revised introduction by Will Straw.


Next year will see a Ricochet reissue of a 1952 Canadian pulp novel that was deemed to spicy for the American market.

I'll say no more.

As for New Year's resolutions, I have but one. I resolve to read more humour. Given the racket from south of the border, I have a feeling I'll be in need of a good laugh every now and then. 

As always, keep kicking against the pricks! Do Johnny Cash and John Metcalf proud.

Bonne année!

Related posts:


Posted by Brian Busby at 6:30 AM 0 comments
Labels: , , , , , , , , ,
Subscribe to: Comments (Atom)