The Globe 100 was published ten days ago – November 22nd – so this annual look at the newspaper's best book picks of a century past may seem late.
It is not. November is far too early.
The Globe's picks for 1924 were published on December 10th of that year. Eight pages in total, all but one dominated by ads, it was cobbled together by Arts editor M.O. Hammond.
What's particularly interesting about the error is that the ever-prolific Stringer published three new novels in 1924 – Empty Hands, Manhandled, and The Story without a Name (the latter two co-authored by Russell Holman ) – the most of any year in his very long career.
The list of foreign fiction features all the names one would expect, like Galsworthy, Masefield, and Walpole. This is the one that has really stood the test of time:
Continuing on a personal note, what surprised me most about Hammond's list is that I hadn't read one of its forty-seven Canadian titles.
A Passage to India, on the other hand... Nope, haven't read that one either.
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| Melvin Ormond Hammond |
It's clear that his heart just wasn't in it. Consider this from Hammond's introduction:
The whole thing makes for exhausting reading, though there is much of interest. For example, the first page features this, which to that time was the greatest recognition of Canada's authors in the annual list:
Certain folks like history and biography under the evening lamp. Others – younger and more romantic, perhaps – want poetry. A few ask for essays and fine reading of a reflective type, something different from the cross-word puzzle. Some desire serious studies of a devotional character. Probably the reading preferred by the largest class is fiction.Was the Arts editor behind this dreary headline?
The whole thing makes for exhausting reading, though there is much of interest. For example, the first page features this, which to that time was the greatest recognition of Canada's authors in the annual list:
What's more, only Canadian books feature on the page, beginning with Chez Nous by Adjutor Rivard.
Chez Nous is listed amongst the works of fiction. I'd been led to believe it is a book of reflection and reminiscence. Archie P. McKishnie's Mates of the Tangle and Yon Toon o' Mine by Logan Weir seem similarly misplaced. I've not read the three, so may be wrong. In fact, I haven't read any of the 1924 Globe picks in Canadian fiction:
La Roux - Johnston Abbott [Edward Montague Ashworth]
The Divine Lady - E. Barrington [L. Adams Beck]
The Master Revenge - H.A. Cody
The Trail of the Conestoga - B. Mabel Dunham
A Sourdough Samaritan - Charles Harrison Gibbons
The Quenchless Light - Agnes C. Laut
The Garden of Folly - Stephen Leacock
Mates of the Tangle - Archie P. McKishnie
Slag and Gold - Phil H. Moore
Julie Cane - Harvey J. O'Higgins
The Locked Book - Frank L. Packard
Chez Nous - Adjutor Rivard
Jimmy of the Gold Coast - Marshall Saunders
The Smoking Flax - Robert Stead
Lonely O'Malley - Arthur Stringer
The Wayside Cross - Mary E. Waagen
Fireweed - Muriel Watson
Gordon of the Lost Lagoon - Robert Watson
Yon Toon o' Mine - Logan Weir [J.B. Perry]
That's eighteen titles in all – the previous year had only eight! – yet there are absences, the most notable being The Land of Afternoon by Gilbert Knox [Madge Macbeth], the year's grand succès de scandale.
Nearly every year, the Globe errs by including a "new" work that is not new at all. In 1924 it was Lonely O'Malley, a reissue Arthur Stringer's 1905 semi-autobiographical second novel.
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| Three that made the cut. |
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| Six that didn't. |
Foreigners don't do too well in the 1924 list, contributing just eighty-six titles. Canadian books number forty-seven, more than any previous list. Somehow, Hammond believes there are fewer. He's particularly down on Canadian verse, lamenting that it has been "a rather a slim year in new poetry so far as Canada is concerned;" but then he presents a list of eight titles, seven of which are Canadian:
Canada My Home - Grant BalfourDream Tapestries - Louise Morey BowmanFlower and Flame - John Crichton [N.G. Guthrie]The New Spoon River - Edgar Lee MastersVerses for My Friends - Bernard McEvoyA Book of Verses - Gertrude MacGregor MoffatWhite Wings of Dawn - Frances Beatrice TaylorEager Footsteps - Anne Elizabeth Wilson
Hammond is far more positive when it comes to Canadian history and biography, recommending titles both familiar (Canadian Federation by Reginald George Trotter) and unfamiliar (Memoirs of Ralph Vansittart by Edward Robert Cameron). I'd forgotten about John Buchan's Lord Minto. As a biography of a past Governor General by a future Governor General, it is probably worth a look, but the book I most want to read is Pioneer Crimes and Punishments in Toronto and the Home District by James Edmund Jones:
A readable record of early of early methods of administering justice, which shows the progress toward humane treatment made during the past century. The writer, one of Toronto's Police Magistrates readily admits the is room for further improvement.I'm less likely to read Presbyterian Pioneer Missionaries in Manitoba, Saskatchewan, Alberta and British Columbia by Rev Hugh McKellar, D.D.
Continuing on a personal note, what surprised me most about Hammond's list is that I hadn't read one of its forty-seven Canadian titles.
A Passage to India, on the other hand... Nope, haven't read that one either.
In my defence, not one of the forty-seven Canadian titles on the 1924 Globe list is in print today.
No surprise there.
No surprise there.
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