Reading Gérard Bessette on His Hundredth

Not for Every Eye [Le libraire]
Gérard Bessette [trans. Glen Shortliffe] 
Toronto: Macmillan, 1962
98 pages

Yesterday marked the centenary of Gérard Bessette's birth. I spent an hour or so reading this translation of his most celebrated work. A novella – not a novel, as Macmillan claims – it isn't very long.

Bessette's title, Le libraire (The Bookseller), refers to narrator and protagonist Hervé Jodoin. It takes the form of a journal written on Sundays, when the bars are closed. The first entry involves Jodoin's arrival in the fictional Quebec town of Saint Joachim, where he has accepted a job in a bookstore. In truth, it's as much a bookstore as, say, Indigo; the better part of the establishment has been given over to toys, stationary, and religious articles. The book department is in the rear, allowing Jodoin to pass a good portion of the day in a quiet snooze.

Killing time is Jodoin's main occupation. He quickly settles into a routine – "book shop, beer parlour, room; room, book shop, beer parlour." At the end of each workday, he heads for Chez Treffelé, a working class bar where he drinks alone at a table located conveniently near the lavatory. After that – meaning, after the bar closes – Jodoin makes for his rooming house bed.

A crack appears in what Jodoin describes as "the monotony of my life" when the store's proprietor, Léon Chicoine, determines that his new bookseller is a believer in liberty and is a proponent of free thought. Chicoine unlocks a door to what Jodoin had thought was a closet, revealing the "sanctum sanctorum," a small, windowless room lined with books found in the Index Librorum Prohibitorum, and listed by Abbé Bethléem and Père Georges Sagehomme.*

Chicoine demands Jodoin's discretion, and asks him to sell the volumes (at inflated prices) to "serious purchasers." Our hero agrees, and starts off for Chez Treffelé "caressing the innocent notion that perhaps after all I was not yet completely useless, that perhaps my life might have a meaning."

Sadly, Jodoin's new customers fail to give meaning to his life:

They sidle up to me with a conspiratorial air and murmur into my ear the name of some author or book, all this in the same tone of someone asking for a condom or a suppository in a drug store. Others are more evasive still; they shower me with meaningful glances and ask me to recommend "something a little out of the ordinary" or "something with a kick to it."

Jodoin quickly comes to resent the extra work involved in retrieving volumes from the sanctum sanctorum, recognizing most aren't at all interested in liberty and freedom of thought: "If these jokers are looking for an aphrodisiac, they can find more effective ones."

The crack widens and drama begins with a pimply-faced boy he recognizes as a student of the Saint Roch School, "located a couple of miles from the town in open country, in the middle of a vast domain belonging to  a community of clerics who combine the dairy industry with the rearing of young men." The student asks for a volume by Voltaire, and whether "through curiosity or a kind of fellow-feeling produced by nostalgia for my own school days," Jodoin retrieves a copy from the sanctum sanctorum.

Le libraire was first published in Paris because Bessette was unable to find a Quebec publisher. This was in 1960, mere months before the Quiet Revolution began. Within two years, the novel had found a Quebec publisher, and had been translated and published in English.

I received this copy of Not for Every Eye as a gift on my twenty-third birthday. I read it the very same summer. A university student at the time, I used its story, and the story of its publication, in writing papers on the Quiet Revolution.

Much of the revolution took place when I was asleep in a crib.

I have people like Gérard Bessette to thank that it did.

* Researching this piece, I was amused to discover that Georges Sagehomme's Répertoire alphabétique de plus de 7000 auteurs avec leurs ouvrages au nombre de 32000 (romans et pièces de théâtre) qualifiés quant à leur valeur morale (1931), was revised nine times; the last – published twenty-nine years after his death – is Répertoire alphabétique de 16700 auteurs 70000 romans et pièces de théâtre cotés au point de vue moral.

Trivia: There is an actual St-Joachim, Quebec, located roughly thirty kilometres downriver from Quebec City, but it bears no resemblance to the town depicted in Bessette's novel.

More trivia: Adapted by M. Charles Cohen for CBC Television (1963) and CBC Radio (1967). The former starred Jack Creley, Larry Mann, and Barbara Hamilton.

Object: A slim volume consisting of white boards with purple type, as an objet Not for Every Eye is my favourite Macmillan of Canada book. Credit goes to Leslie Smart. Arnaud Maggs designed the jacket.

Bibliophiles will appreciate the adverts for other Macmillan titles on the back cover. I own three, but have read only one.

Access: The translation may be neglected, but it is not rare. Very Good copies are offered online for as little as ten dollars. I've seen some evidence of a softcover edition that may have been a rebind. It would seem that in 1977 the novella was absorbed into Macmillan's moribund Laurentian Library, though I've yet to encounter a copy. I have, however, seen the 1984 edition, issued by Exile (right). It is still available for purchase.

A second English translation, which I've not read, was published in 1999 by Guernica Editions. Its translator, Steven Urquhart has written a very interesting essay about the need and process:

Retranslating a Quebec Classic

The Urquhart translation is also still in print.

Remarkably, there is a Czech translation, Skandal V Knihkpectvi (Scandal in the Bookstore; Prague: Odeon, 1974). Collectors may be interested in a copy inscribed to Bessette by translator Ea Masnerova on offer from an Oregon bookseller.

Copies of Le libraire are plentiful. The cheapest copy I've seen offered online is going for one Yankee dollar. Few copies of the first edition, published in Paris by Jilliard, are in evidence.

Toronto: Venice on the Lake or One Big Hothouse?

A brief addendum to last week's post on Leonard Bertin's Target 2067: Canada's Second Century.

The image above serves to remind that in the 'sixties Montreal led the way into Canada's future. It still does. Montreal was also the country's largest city, so why is the focus of Leonard Bertin's Target 2067 (1968) on Toronto?

"Venice on the Lake," the title of the book's opening chapter, is a reference to Toronto; not Toronto as it was at time of publication, but the Toronto Bertin imaged it would become. This would be a city of skyscrapers measuring up to a mile in height, many built on artificial islands formed by dumping landfill into Lake Ontario. Each of these buildings would be self-contained communities, serviced by tunnels and tubes carrying water, gas, steam heat, electricity, drains, telephone cables, pneumatic delivery tubes, electronically controlled roads, and "robot passenger trains."

Not everyone would be a member of the mile-high club. For example, Bertin's future hero, space prospector John Green, lives in a building that is a mere half-mile high. Still others would live in sloped buildings, like those once proposed for Humber Bay.

A half-century on, Humber Bay doesn't appear nearly so fantastic:

The Pilkington Glass Age Development Committee incorporated similar sloping buildings in its designs for Sea City. A thirty-thousand soul community to be built off the shores of Toronto, it was seen as a "solution to the growing shortage of land for urban development."

Looks damp and chilly.

Those shunning Waterworld for the mainland would find a more temperate climate within the covered city advanced by Toronto engineer T.H. McLorg.

The executive vice-president of the Canadian Refrigeration and Air Conditioning Association, McLorg called for covering 145-square miles of Toronto with 2300 transparent fibreglass and plastic cupolas. These would be held aloft by internal air pressure, and tethered to the ground by hollow cables that would drain off rainwater and melted snow:

What advantages and economies would such a scheme bring? Mr. McLorg believes we can look forward to the day when Canadians will be able to grow oranges in their back gardens, watch roses bloom in December and cherry trees blossom in February; when they can play golf and tennis all winter, count on the same fifteen minutes to get to the office in January that it takes in July, buy a topless convertible for their wives, laugh when the heating bill arrives, and hang up their snow shovels for ever.

This uncommon reference to environmental impact is typical. In many ways, Target 2067 reads like a Victorian work. The environment doesn't much factor into anything, except as something that must be overcome. Bertin identifies only two "obvious snags" associated with T.H. McLorg's plastic covered city: airplanes and lightening strikes. If an airplane were to strike the city's cover, he acknowledges that the loss of air pressure might bring the whole thing down on the city. What then would happen to the orange trees, roses, and cherry blossoms? What he doesn't acknowledge is the environmental impact of such a structure on indigenous plants and wildlife. Migratory birds? He doesn't give them a thought.

And here we are in 2018 wringing our hands over wind turbines.

My wife is still hoping for a convertible.

Bonus: Three glimpses of a future past. Calgary's emigration to Oregon might best be explained by cheap glue.

Related post:

Woah, We're Half Way There!

Woah, We're Half Way There!

Target 2067: Canada’s Second Century
Leonard Bertin
Toronto: Macmillan, 1968
323 pages

Did Target 2067 miss its target? I ask because it has the very appearance of a centennial book, but was published the following year. Author Leonard Bertin was a journalist – ex-Daily Telegraph, ex-Toronto Star – and would've been familiar with deadlines. At time of publication, he was working as a science editor at the University of Toronto. Bertin already had a few books under his belt, most notably

his first, the cleverly-titled, Atom Harvest (1956), described in an advert placed in the March 1958 number of Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists as "the bitter story of how British-American atomic collaboration broke down after the war, leaving Britain with no bombs of its own, no plant or knowhow to build them. Mr. Bertin... tells about Britain's remarkably quick, economical and successful program to acquire without American help both nuclear weapons and effective power reactors."

And so, a happy story.

Take that, you ungrateful Yanks!

Bertin met his Italian wife, Eleonora, as Rome correspondent for the Daily Telegraph, but he was a science writer at heart. What I find most intriguing about his bibliography is a stark shift from optimism to concern. Atom Harvest was followed by The Boys' Book of Modern Scientific Wonders and Inventions (1957), The Boys' Book of Engineering Wonders of the World (1961), Target 2067 (1968), Noise (1972), Energy and Survival (1973), Nuclear Winter (1986), The Impact of Cruise Technology (1987).

Published seven years after The Boys' Book of Engineering Wonders of the World and four years before Noise, Target 2067 is something of a transition. Challenges are recognized, but faith in science and society remain strong. The book's simple intent is to detail the numerous advancements Canadians will enjoy as they approach their country's bicentennial.

It begins with a short work of science fiction, set in 2067, in which a man named John Green visits Toronto’s Sunnybrook Hospital. John's preparing for a new propecting job on Mars, and will be needing his anti-plasmodic shots and a full-scale microchemical check and encephalogram. He writes his name, address and social security number on a card "of the sort fed into computers, with holes punched in it here and there," and places it in a slot. One minute later, his records have been obtained from Ottawa. A woman enters "wearing the white paper coat and skirt of an interne [sic]," looks over yards of "teleparent copy," and performs the necessary tasks.

John leaves Sunnybrook an hour later. Forgoing the "moving pavement," he walks to the Bayview subway and settles in for the fifteen-mile journey to his home. John lives on one of the twenty or so small islands formed by landfill on Lake Ontario. His apartment in Centropolis isn't different much than any other. Located on the 201st storey, roughly half-way up his building, it offers views of Niagara Falls and Port Hope. It's a comfortable place, shared with wife Johanna Green and their unidentified child. The couple's greatest challenge is in keeping fit. Holovision and three-dimensional theatre tempt, as do the hot meals that can be called up by dialling the self-service centre below. How often have the Greens dropped their used plastic plates and cutlery into the garbage chute? Too often, I expect.

Bertin's second Canadian century is one of rapid growth and advancement. By 2067, he expects one hundred million people will live in Ontario alone. In this respect, Canada is no different than any other nation. The global population may reach 15 billion.

How to feed the billions? Fish farms, of course.

What of resources? Nuclear blasting will reveal the true extent of our mineral wealth. And let's not forget that we've only just begun mining the Athabaska tar sands.

Fresh water? Don't give it a second thought.

Pollution? The topic doesn't even feature in the book's index.

Keep sending those plastic plates and cutlery down your 201st-storey garbage chute, Green family.

Remember John’s visit to Sunnybrook? It seems a month prior, during a visit to Cape Kennedy, he'd suffered a bout of appendicitis. Asked by the paper-coated interne how he feels, John answers, "I feel grand... A couple of week’s vacation on the Great Barrier Reef did me a lot of good, but half the population of Ontario seemed to have the same idea. They were all down there scuba fishing."

Yesterday – by which I mean, October 15, 2018 – Bloomburg reported that nearly half the corals of the Great Barrier Reef are now dead.

Ah, but wasn't tomorrow wonderful!

Object: A brightly designed hardcover with jacket by Alan Daniel. I purchased my copy online this past summer from a Niagara Falls, New York, bookseller. Price: C$7.00. The postage and handling was reasonable, but the listing neglected to mention that it is a discard from North York Public Library.

Access: Target 2067 is held by at least thirty-six Canadian libraries, including the Library of Parliament, Library and Archives Canada, the National Science Library, the CMHC Housing Knowledge Centre library, and the Institut National de la Recherche Scientifique library.

Used copies aren't plentiful, but online offerings are cheap, ranging from US$5.47 (Very Good in Good dust jacket) to US$22.00 ("GOOD X-LIB").

Related posts:

Toronto: Venice on the Lake or One Big Hothouse?
An Atlantic Canada Steampunk Fantasy

Global Warming as Nationalist Dream

A Man, A Plan, A Dam – Labrador!

The Dustiest Bookcase: J is for Jacob

The Dustiest Bookcase:

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:

Day Before Yesterday

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:

The Mail & Empire
7 June 1928

Verse for Mother's Day by Dorothy Livesay's Mum

Florence Randal Livesay
1874 - 1953
RIP

Florence Randal Livesay was a remarkable woman. Born, raised and educated in the small Quebec town of Compton, during the very same years as fellow Comptonian Louis St-Laurent, as a young woman Livesay taught in Montreal, New York, and overseas in Boer War concentration camps. She later worked at the Winnipeg Telegram and Winnipeg Free Press. Her lone book of verse, Shepherd's Purse (Toronto: Macmillan, 1923), was followed by a novel, Savour of Salt (Toronto: Dent, 1927), that was praised by William Arthur Deacon. I came to Florence Randal Livesay through my interest in her daughter, Dorothy Livesay, whose career was propagated in the pages of the Free Press.

Florence Randal Livesay was a good mother.

This verse is one of four Florence Randal Livesay poems included in editor John W. Garvin's Canadian Poems of the Great War (Toronto: McClelland & Stewart, 1918):

Being the the hundredth since the end of the Great War, I couldn't let this Mother's Day pass without acknowledging the fact and adding this verse by Isabel Ecclestone Mackay, which is also taken from Canadian Poems of the Great War:

Happy Mother's Day!

War is over if you want it.

Related posts:

A Novel My Mother Read

A Poem for Mother's Day from the Great War

Ten of the Best: Spanking Good Book Buys of 2015

Early morning on Boxing Day and I'm lying comfortably in bed. My late mother is to thank. She taught that there is something unseemly in leaving family Christmas dinner to wait overnight for the chance at a $9.99 blu-ray player at Best Buy.

Because I'm done with buying books for this year, the time has come to present my ten favourite acquisitions, beginning with the 1907 Routledge edition of The Clockmaker pictured above. Bought for a buck a couple go months back, the series title, "Half-forgotten Books", did attract.

Half-forgotten books are what this blog is all about… the three-quarters-forgotten and entirely forgotten, too. What follow are the nine others:

The British Barbarians
Grant Allen
London: Lane, 1895

A second printing of Allen's second biggest book, this one has slowly risen to the top of the pile on my night table. The oldest addition to my collection this year – our literature is still so very young – I won this for one pound in an ebay auction. Shipping charges tempered the victory.

Kalee's Shrine
Grant Allen
New York: New         Amsterdam, [1897]

Another Allen. One hundred and sixteen years after his death, books by this son of Kingston are becoming scarce, so I was pleased to get this one for just US$4.99. I understand it takes place primarily on the East Anglian coast and features an oculist.

The New Front Line
Hubert Evans
Toronto: Macmillan, 1927

A gift from James Calhoun, with whom I collaborated in writing the Introduction to Peregrine Acland's Great War novel All Else is Folly. I'm embarrassed to reveal – and reveal I must – that I was unaware Evans too had served in the conflict.

Hath Not a Jew…
A.M. Klein
New York: Behrman's         Jewish Book House,         1940

The first edition of the first book by the first great poet of Jewish Montreal, I found this for a dollar.

King of Egypt, King of              Dreams
Gwendolyn MacEwen
Toronto: Macmillan, 1971

The poet's novel of ancient Egypt and Akhenaton, I came across this copy – inscribed by MacEwen – whilst volunteering at our local library's book sale. In the words of the immortal Lou Reed, "you're going to reap just what you sow."

The Three Roads
Kenneth Millar
New York: Dell, [n.d.]

I purchased this first paperback edition at London's Attic Books, a very pleasant walk from the University of Western Ontario, at which Millar studied English literature.

The Damned and the          Destroyed
Kenneth Orvis
London: Dobson, 1962

A second novel from a Montreal writer who seems entirely forgotten. I'd never heard of him, and yet Orvis was published internationally and managed to limp on into the 'eighties. See: Over and Under the Table: The Anatomy of an Alcoholic (Montreal: Optimum, 1985).

A Japanese Nightingale
Onoto Watanna [pseud              Winnifred Eaton]
New York: Harper, 1901

Another second novel, this one written by the most accomplished member of Montreal's remarkable Eaton family. A true joy to hold and behold, I purchased my copy just two months ago at Attic Books.

The Keys of My Prison
Frances Shelley Wees
London: Jenkins, 1956

This Millaresque mystery set amongst the privileged of Toronto is a great read. My pristine first English edition, purchased from a bookseller in Lewes, adds to the delight. Seeing something older than myself in such fine form brings hope for the New Year.




And on that note… A Happy New Year to one and all!

Update: The British Barbarians read and reviewed.

Related post:

Done with Buying Books

Trudeaumania II

One prime minister weeps over the coffin of another. I doubt anyone at McClelland & Stewart was thinking this back in 2000 when they put together that cover. It's not something I saw coming – not until last month, anyway – and certainly not in so decisive a victory. The results aren't quite what I would've liked, but I'm thrilled just the same. 

And so, the country's darkest decade ends with Stephen Harper defeated by the son of a man he'd demonized leading a party he'd vowed to destroy. There's a certain justice in that.

In recognition and celebration, ten favourite books by and about Trudeau père from my collection.

Trudeau
Ottawa: Deneau, 1984

A souvenir from the 1984 Liberal convention at which Pierre Trudeau stepped down as party leader. I bought my copy at a local Goodwill at precisely 4:00pm on 28 September 2000 – I kept the receipt – then arrived home to learn that Trudeau's death had just been announced on the CBC.

Federalism and the French Canadians
Pierre Elliott Trudeau
Toronto: Macmillan of Canada, 1968

Ex-libris John Robarts, 17th Premier of Ontario.

Sex and the Single Prime Minister
Michael Cowley
[Don Mills, ON]: Greywood, 1968

The first of three pieces of similar silliness published during Trudeau's first term. Glimpses of each can be found here and here.

PM/Dialogue
Keswick, ON: High Hill, [1972?]

A mysterious book I picked up sixteen years ago at a United Church book sale in Merrickville, Ontario. I've never seen another copy.

Conversations with Canadians
Pierre Elliott Trudeau
Toronto: University of Toronto, 1972

A signed first edition, excavated just last year in a local thrift store. Price: $1.00. 

The Trudeau Question
W.A. Wilson
Montreal: Montreal Star, 1972

Written "to make both the issues and the politics more comprehensible to the voters who will make their judgement this year."
Thanks, Montreal Star!

A Time for Action:
Toward the Renewal of the Canadian Federation
Pierre Elliott Trudeau
[Ottawa]: Minister of Supply and Services Canada, 1978

Found amongst a pile of newspapers left behind by the previous owner of our first house. Bonus!

Trudeau and Our Times
Volume 1: The Magnificent Obsession
Stephen Clarkson & Christina McCall
Toronto: McClelland & Stewart, 1990

"He haunts us still." Great first line. I was mistaken for Alexandre Trudeau at the launch.

Memoirs
Pierre Elliott Trudeau
Toronto: McClelland & Stewart, 1993

Signed.

Related posts:

Sex and the Trudeaus: The Bachelor Canada
Sex and the Trudeaus: Son and Hair

Pierre Elliott Trudeau, Ladies Man

Margaret's Marriage in Mass Market

About Those Butt-Ugly Laurentian Library Books

"'Butt-ugly' is a bit harsh, don't you think?" writes a friend in response to my description of Macmillian of Canada's not-much-missed Laurentian Library.

I'm not so sure.

I bought my first Laurentian Library book, Canada's First Century by Donald Creighton, in preparation for my first semester at John Abbott College.* Its pages had turned brown before leaving the campus bookstore. My second Laurentian Library purchase, volume two of Mason Wade's The French Canadians 1760-1967,  developed a curled spine, yet I never read the thing.

(Volume two of Mason Wade's The French Canadians 1760-1967 is nearly six hundred pages long.)

The Laurentian Library was meant to be Macmillan's answer to McClelland & Stewart's New Canadian Library. Cousins, they shared many of the same afflictions. NCL suffered no spinal deformities, but its pages were similarly discoloured. The covers of both were susceptible to wear; as with Tsarevich Alexei, the gentlest handling might bring harm.

Begun in 1967, nine years after NCL, Macmillan's series was heavy with Macmillan authors: Hugh MacLennan, Morley Callaghan, Robertson Davies, Ethel Wilson, Mavis Gallant, W.O. Mitchell, young pup Jack Hodgins and others. It was an awkward list conceived with a weak eye on the academic market; the other concentrated on an effort to keep Macmillan titles in print and, by extension, in house. Robert Kroetsch's But We Are Exiles rubbed shoulders with Pierre Trudeau's Federalism and the French Canadians, which was followed by Erik Munsterhjelm's The Wind and the Caribou: Hunting and Trapping in Northern Canada.

The NCL offerings of the same years were the ugliest ever, but Laurentian Library's were uglier still. Future publisher Hugh Kane acknowledged as much in a 1973 memo to John Gray: "Our books are manufactured very cheaply, printed on newsprint, and do not contain introductions." Sadly, his push for a general editor, the introduction of introductions and proper production values were ignored.

Directionless, the Laurentian Library stumbled along for nearly two decades. In The Legacy of the Macmillan Company of Canada (University of Toronto Press, 2011), Ruth Panofsky counts fifty titles and pegs 1979 as the series' final year, but I know of over thirty more, including #77, The Periwinkle Assault by Charles Dennis.

I'd never heard of The Periwinkle Assault before today. The second volume of something called the Broken Sabre Quartet, it was followed by Mavis Gallant's neglected novels Green Water, Green Sky and A Fairly Good Time. The last Laurentian Library title of which I'm aware – #83 – is The Winter of the Fisher by Cameron Langford. It was published in 1985. Did The Winter of the Fisher mark the end of the series? If so, should we not acknowledge that the Laurentian Library went out on a fairly high note?

I'm not talking about the cover. I'm sure it was ugly.

Butt-ugly?

I've never seen a copy.

* September 1979, if you must know.

Related posts:

About Those Ugly NCL Covers

About Those Awful PaperJacks Covers

News Stand Library Cover Cavalcade

The Stylish, Sophisticated Théâtre Canadien