The Nine Best Canadian Novels of the 1920s

In my twenties, the 'twenties – by which I mean the 1920s – seemed the height of art, film, decadence, glamour, and romance.

I'm not sure I was wrong.

The decade also saw the the height of the novel, though perhaps not in Canada. My CanLit profs assigned works by Mazo de la Roche, Frederick Philip Grove and Martha Ostenso. How they paled beside Faulkner, Fitzgerald, Forster, Hemingway, Joyce, Wharton, and Woolf! But then, what might one expect from a country of a mere nine million?

Time has passed, during which I've come to recognize that the keepers of the canon have messed up in so very many ways. 

As we're now half-way through the 2020s, I present this list of the nine best Canadian novels of the 1920s. Not one of the authors received so much as a passing mention in my CanLit courses.

By no means definitive, I've limited the list to nine titles because I've yet to read Douglas Durkin's The Magpie (1923) and They Have Bodies (1929) by Barney Allen (Sol Allen). From what I know of the two, it's likely that at least one would round out a top ten. I'll be making a point of reading both this year and will keep you informed. But for now:

The Thread of Flame
Basil King
New York: Harper, 1920

In the aughts and tens of the last century, King topped American bestseller lists with The Inner Shrine, The Wild Olive, and The Street Called Straight, though his two best books date from the twenties. This one involves a man who lost his memory whilst fighting in the Great War, but don't let that put you off.

The Empty Sack
Basil King
New York: Harper, 1921

The best King novel of the nine I've read, this involves the Folletts, transplanted Nova Scotians living comfortably in New York City until the aging patriarch is let go by his employer. The drama that unfolds has less to do with the economic devastation than it does the struggles in adapting to a post-Great War world.

The Wine of Life
Arthur Stringer
New York: Knopf, 1921

In his time, Stringer was dismissed as a writer with an eye on the market. This work, an outlier, was inspired by his ill-fated marriage to statuesque Gibson Girl Jobyna Howland. It's Stringer's most literary novel as evidenced by the fact that it was rejected by his usual publisher Bobbs-Merrill only to be picked up by Alfred Knopf. 

The Hidden Places
Bertand W. Sinclair
Toronto: Ryerson, 1922

A novel about a veteran of the Great War written by a man who never served, The Hidden Places can seem absurd at times, and relies too much on coincidence, but it is interesting for its damning indictment of the treatment of men who returned from the conflict scared and disfigured.

Pagan Love
John Murray Gibbon
Toronto: McClelland &

   Stewart, 1922

The most cutting Canadian novel of the decade, it has three targets: the self-help industry, corporate culture, and gender norms. Criticisms of the first two bring insight, but that of the last makes Pagan Love one of the most intriguing Canadian novels of the twentieth century. 

"Cattle"
Winnifred Eaton
New York: Watt, 1924

A late career novel written by a Montrealer of Chinese and English parents who'd achieved fame by passing herself off as a Japanese princess. Eaton's final years were spent on an Alberta ranch belonging to her husband, inspiring this violent, disturbing novel set in cattle country.

The Land of Afternoon
Gilbert Knox [Madge

   Macbeth]
Ottawa: Graphic, 1924

Scandalous in its day, something of a head-scratcher in ours, The Land of Afternoon provides further evidence that romans à clef tend to age poorly. There are biting satirical sketches, but who are the models? Even then, I expect few outside Ottawa had a clue. 

Blencarrow
Isabel MacKay
Toronto: Allen, 1926

The last novel from a writer who never shied away from unpleasant topics: drug addiction, child abduction, worker exploitation, racism, mental illness. Domestic abuse and its effect on a wife and daughters permeate this one, yet it is not a message novel.  

All Else Is Folly: A Tale of

   War and Passion
Peregrine Acland
Toronto: McClelland &

   Stewart, 1929

The great Canadian novel of the Great War. Written by one who was there, it is highly autobiographical and would've been banned had the author's father not been so well connected. Praised by Ford Maddox Ford and Frank Harris.

A century later, two are in print. They were not when I first read them. In fact, all nine had been out of print since the early 'thirties. Ten years ago, I played a part in reviving All Else is Folly as part of Dundurn's Voyageur Classics series.

Winnifred Eaton's "Cattle" was reissued in 2023 by Invisible Publishing. It was reviewed at the Dusty Bookcase here back in 2014.

If given the opportunity to bring another back, I'd chose John Murray Gibbon's Pagan Love. It is the most remarkable, unconventional, and challenging Canadian novel of the decade.

Or is that They Have Bodies?

I aim to find out.

Related posts:

A Man Forgets His Identity (but not his manners)
The Great Canadian Post-Great War Novel?
The Most Depressing Canadian Novel of All Time?
Sex, Betrayal and the Scars of the Great War
Life, Liberty, and the Pursuit of Self-Improvement
Alberta Gothic

A Very Canadian Succès de scandale

The Promise of a Man, a Mother in So Much Pain

Alec Falcon, c'est moi

The Globe 100 133 of 1924: Hammond's Organ

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.

Melvin Ormond Hammond 

It's clear that his heart just wasn't in it. Consider this from Hammond's introduction:

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.

Ho-hum.

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.

Three that made the cut.

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.

Six that didn't.

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:

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 Balfour

Dream Tapestries - Louise Morey Bowman

Flower and Flame - John Crichton [N.G. Guthrie]

The New Spoon River - Edgar Lee Masters

Verses for My Friends - Bernard McEvoy

A Book of Verses - Gertrude MacGregor Moffat

White Wings of Dawn - Frances Beatrice Taylor

Eager 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.

Related posts:

The Globe's Best Books of 1923:

'Canadian Authors Can Be Read With Pleasure, Profit and Pride'

Best Books of 1922: Amidst a Flood of Mediocrity

The 1921 Globe 100 206: Don't Mention the War 

Best Books of 1920: Beware the Bolshevik Poets

The Globe 100 One Hundred Years Ago: Poets are Struck Dumb

and Capitalism Proves Embarrassing (1919)

The Globe 100 178 of 2018

The Season's Best Books in Review - A.D. 1917:

The String of Canadian Patriotism is Fingered

The Season's Best Books in Review - A.D. 1916

The Season's Best Books in Review – A.D. 1915;

Featuring the Best Canadian Book Ever Published

A Very Canadian Succès de scandale

Gloria Gets Groped

Jazz Age Death Ray, Baby!

A Very Canadian Succès de scandale

The Parliamentary Librarian chased after "Gilbert Knox". Conservative MP Alfred Fripp joined in the hunt, intent on having the author deported to who knows where. The clergy condemned, Ottawa echoed with talk of lawsuits, an election was fought. and a government fell. In the midst of it all, the woman behind the pseudonym suffered a nervous breakdown and was sent away to a Toronto nursing home…

So begins my latest Canadian Notes & Queries Dusty Bookcase column. The rest is found in the new issue, number 92, sharing pages with writing by Michel Basilières, Laura Bast, Darryl Joel Berger, Kerry Clare, Michael Darling, Marc di Saverio, Jennifer A. Franssen, Kaper Hartman, Melanie Janisse, Lydia Kwa, Nick Maandag, David Mason, John McFetridge, Shane Neilson, Patricia Robertson, Rebecca Rosenblum, Mark Sampson, Russell Smith, JC Sutcliffe, Nicholas Zacharewicz and, of course, Seth.

Fellow contributors will understand my singling out Alex Good's "Shackled to a Corpse: The Long, Long Shadow" and Stephen Henighan's "Jimmy the Crossdresser, Mother of Mavis Gallant" as being particularly worthy of attention.

My own contribution, much more modest, concerns The Land of Afternoon, a very good, yet forgotten roman à clef published in 1925 under the name "Gilbert Knox". Madge Macbeth (right) was its true author, which is something not even her publisher knew. The author took the secret to her grave, leaving behind a bright white paper trail for all to follow.

Few have.

Go back ninety years and we'd all be talking about The Land of Afternoon. The first book to come out of Ottawa's Graphic Publishers, it landed in the midst of the federal election fought between Arthur Meighen's Conservatives and the Liberals of William Lyon Mackenzie King. The latter doesn't figure, but Meighen served as a model for protagonist Raymond Dillings, Member of Parliament for Pinto Plains. Wife Isabel inspired Marjorie Dillings… and on it goes.

Again, you'll find more in the new CNQ.

For now, a couple of pieces of trivia that didn't make it into the piece:

1. In February 1936, a scene from the novel was dramatized by Toronto's Canadian Literature Club.
2. Macbeth's good friend Lawrence Burpee once appeared in disguise at a Canadian Authors Association event as "Gilbert Knox".

Burpee, not Knox, May 1926

Subscriptions to CNQ are available through this link.

Done With Buying Books

For this year, at least. Not only will budget not allow, I'm running out of room.

I shouldn't complain.

These past eleven months have brought an embarrassment of riches – and at such small cost! Case in point, G. Herbert Sallans' uncommon Little Man, a book I've wanted for a ferret's age. Sure, the dust jacket isn't in the best condition, but online listings for jacketless copies run to US$1899. I bought my Sallans for three Canadian dollars. This happened back in July. I was taking advantage of a London bookstore's moving sale. The copy was originally marked at fifteen.

During that same visit, another bookstore yielded a pristine American first of Tony Aspler's The Streets of Askelon, the roman à clef inspired by Brendan Behan's disastrous 1961 visit to Canada. I'd been hunting it for a loon's age. Cost me a buck.

Little Man and The Streets of Askelon are two of the ten favourite books bought this year. What follows are the remaining eight:

All Else is Folly
Peregrine Acland
New York: Coward-
     McCann, 1929

A title that will be familiar to regular readers. After eight decades, All Else is Folly finally returned to print this year, complete with new Introduction by myself and Great War scholar James Calhoun. I won this particular copy, inscribed by Acland, in an eBay auction on the very day we completed our work.

Under Sealed Orders
Grant Allen
New York: Grosset &
     Dunlap, [n.d.]

A political thriller by my favourite Canadian novelist of the Victorian era, I've been saving this one for a snowy weekend. This may not be a first edition, but I'm confident that it's the most attractive. Six plates! Purchased for US$9.95 from an Illinois bookseller.

Illicit Sonnets
George Elliott Clarke
London: Eyewear, 2013

A collection of verse by an old friend, Illicit Sonnets stands out in George's bibliography as the first published in England. At the same time, it's typical of the high quality titles coming from ex-pat Montrealer Todd Swift's Eyewear Publishing. A poet himself, Todd dares publish verse in hardcover… as it should be.

The Prospector
Ralph Connor [pseud.
     Charles W. Gordon]
Toronto: New
     Westminster, [n.d.]

You can get pretty much any Connor title for two dollars. My problem is that I never quite remember what I have. This copy of The Prospector, bought in London for $1.50, turned out to be a duplicate. I thought I'd wasted my money until I noticed that it's inscribed by the author.

The Land of Afternoon
Gilbert Knox [pseud.
     Madge Macbeth]
Ottawa: Graphic, 1924

The subject of a forthcoming column in Canadian Notes & Queries, this roman à clef centres on a character based Arthur Meighen. It was a scandal in its day, and holds up rather well, even though many of its models are forgotten.

There Was a Ship
Richard Le Gallienne
Toronto: Doubleday,
     Doran & Gundy, 1930

Found in downtown London on Attic Books' dollar cart. If John Glassco is to be believed – evidence is slight – he took down this novel as Le Gallienne dictated in a semi-stuper. Either way, it's a pretty good story… by which I mean Glassco's. Le Gallienne's? I'm not so sure.

Fasting Friar
Edward McCourt
Toronto: McClelland &
     Stewart, 1963

I'd never so much as heard of Fasting Friar, before coming across a pristine copy – $9.50 – at Montreal's Word Bookstore. An engaging novel in which academic life and censorship intertwine, it proved to be one of this year's favourite reads. Still hate the title, though.

Mrs. Spring Fragrance
Sui Sin Far [pseud.
     Edith Eaton]
Chicago: McClurg, 1912

The only title published during Eaton's lifetime, I paid US$100 for this Very Good copy. This would've been back in the spring. Appropriate. Since then a Good copy has shown up for sale online at US$45.85.

Je ne regrette rien.


Update: Grant Allen's Under Sealed Orders now read.