The Dusty Bookcase: McCourt

Showing posts with label McCourt. Show all posts

22 January 2019

The Dusty Bookcase: Ten Years, 100 Titles

The Dusty Bookcase turns ten today. How is that possible? What was meant to be a six-year journey through the obscure and forgotten titles in my library has turned into something of a career. Is "career" the right word? This blog doesn't pay the bills, but it has resulted in a book, a regular column in Canadian Notes & Queries, and the odd gig with other magazines. It's also responsible, in part, for my position as Series Editor of the Véhicule Press Ricochet Books imprint.

True to the plan, I pulled the plug on this blog the day after The Dusty Bookcase turned six... only to be coaxed back by friends. I was easily swayed. I've enjoyed my time here; The Dusty Bookcase has brought much more than work, and has never seemed like work.

Though I don't see an end to The Dusty Bookcase, posts will be less frequent this year. I owe my publisher two books – and, as they'll pay at least a few bills, I aim to deliver the first. Still, let's see if I can't make it through these:

For this tenth anniversary, I've put together a list of the one hundred books that have brought the most enjoyment on this journey. The very best feature, as do the very worst. And so, Ralph Allen's cutting satire The Chartered Libertine (praised by Northrop Frye) is followed by two of Sol Allen's gynaecologist novels, which are in turn followed by the paranoid delusions of lying, hate-filled bigot J.V. Andrew. What fun!

All are recommended reading. You can't go wrong.

Hey, wasn't blogging supposed to be dead by now?

All Else is Folly - Peregrine Acland (1929)

Love is a Long Shot - Ted Allan (1949)

For Maimie's Sake - Grant Allen (1886)

The Devil's Die - Grant Allen (1888)

What's Bred in the Bone - Grant Allen (1891)

Michael's Crag - Grant Allen (1893)

The British Barbarians - Grant Allen (1895)

Under Sealed Orders - Grant Allen (1896)

Hilda Wade - Grant Allen (1900)

The Chartered Libertine - Ralph Allen (1954)

Toronto Doctor - Sol Allen (1949)
The Gynecologist - Sol Allen (1965)

Bilingual Today, French Tomorrow - J.V. Andrew (1977)

Firebrand - Rosemary Aubert (1986)

Revenge! - Robert Barr (1896)

The Unchanging East - Robert Barr (1900)
The Triumphs of Eugène Valmont - Robert Barr (1912)

Similia Similibus - Ulric Barthe (1916)
Under the Hill - Aubrey Beardsley and John Glassco (1959)
The Pyx - John Buell (1959)
Four Days - John Buell (1962)

A Lot to Make Up For - John Buell (1990)

Mr. Ames Against Time - Philip Child (1949)
Murder Without Regret - E. Louise Cushing (1954)

Soft to the Touch - Clark W. Dailey (1949)
The Four Jameses - William Arthur Deacon (1927)
The Measure of a Man - Norman Duncan (1911)

Marion - Winnifred Eaton (1916)

"Cattle" - Winnifred Eaton (1923)

I Hate You to Death - Keith Edgar (1944)

The Midnight Queen - May Agnes Fleming (1863)
Victoria - May Agnes Fleming (1863)

Present Reckoning - Hugh Garner (1951)
The English Governess - John Glassco (1960)
Erres boréales - Armand Grenier (1944)
Everyday Children - Edith Lelean Groves (1932)

This Was Joanna - Danny Halperin (1949)
The Door Between - Danny Halperin (1950)
The Last Canadian - William C. Heine (1974)
Dale of the Mounted: Atlantic Assignment - Joe Holliday (1956)

Flee the Night in Anger - Louis Kaufman (1952)
No Tears for Goldie - Thomas P. Kelley (1950)
The Broken Trail - George W. Kerby (1909)
The Wild Olive - Basil King (1910)
The Abolishing of Death - Basil King (1919)
The Thread of Flame - Basil King (1920)
The Empty Sack - Basil King (1921)
The Happy Isles - Basil King (1923)

Dust Over the City - André Langevin (1953)
Orphan Street - André Langevin (1974)
Behind the Beyond - Stephen Leacock (1913)
The Hohenzollerns in America - Stephen Leacock (1919)
The Town Below - Roger Lemelin (1944)
The Plouffe Family - Roger Lemelin (1948)
In Quest of Splendour - Roger Lemelin (1953)
The Happy Hairdresser - Nicholas Loupos (1973)
Young Canada Boys With the S.O.S. on the Frontier -
Harold C. Lowrey (1918)

The Land of Afternoon - Madge Macbeth (1924)
Up the Hill and Over - Isabel Ecclestone Mackay (1917)
Blencarrow - Isabel Ecclestone Mackay (1926)
Fasting Friar - Edward McCourt (1963)
Shadow on the Hearth - Judith Merril (1950)
The Three Roads - Kenneth Millar (1948)
Wall of Eyes - Margaret Millar (1953)
The Iron Gates - Margaret Millar (1945)
Do Evil in Return - Margaret Millar (1950)
Rose's Last Summer - Margaret Millar (1952)
Vanish in an Instant - Margaret Millar (1952)
Wives and Lovers - Margaret Millar (1954)
Beast in View - Margaret Millar (1955)
An Air That Kills - Margaret Millar (1957)
The Fiend - Margaret Millar (1964)
Awful Disclosures of Maria Monk - Maria Monk (1836)
Murder Over Dorval - David Montrose (1952)
The Body on Mount Royal - David Montrose (1953)
Gambling with Fire - David Montrose (1969)
Wreath for a Redhead - Brian Moore (1951)
Intent to Kill - Brian Moore (1956)
Murder in Majorca - Brian Moore (1957)

The Long November - James Benson Nablo (1946)

The Damned and the Destroyed - Kenneth Orvis (1962)

The Miracle Man - Frank L. Packard (1914)
Confessions of a Bank Swindler - Lucius A. Parmalee (1968)
The Canada Doctor - Clay Perry and John L.E. Pell (1933)
Adopted Derelicts - Bluebell S. Phillips (1957)

He Will Return - Helen Dickson Reynolds (1959)
A Stranger and Afraid - Marika Robert (1964)
Poems - Richard Rohmer (1980)
Death by Deficit - Richard Rohmer (1995)

Dark Passions Subdue - Douglas Sanderson (1952)
Hot Freeze - Douglas Sanderson (1954)
The Darker Traffic - Douglas Sanderson (1954)
Night of the Horns - Douglas Sanderson (1958)
Catch a Fallen Starlet - Douglas Sanderson (1960)
The Hidden Places - Bertrand W. Sinclair (1922)
I Lost It All in Montreal - Donna Steinberg (1983)
The Wine of Life - Arthur Stringer (1921)

For My Country - Jules Paul Tardivel (1895)

The Keys of My Prison - Frances Shelley Wees (1956)
Arming for Armageddon - John Wesley White (1983)

Related posts:

Fin
The Dusty Bookcase at 1000

05 December 2014

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.

12 September 2014

University Professor Writes Roman à Clef Roman

Fasting Friar

Edward McCourt

Toronto: McClelland & Stewart, 1963

222 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.

07 January 2013

Anyone Care about the Ryerson Fiction Award?

It's not found in The Canadian Encyclopedia, The Oxford Companion to Canadian Literature or W.H. New's Companion to Canadian Literature; the three-volume History of the Book in Canada limits mention to a single sentence; misnamed the "Ryerson Fiction Prize", fleeting reference is made in The Cambridge History of Canadian Literature – yet in mid-20th-century Canada the Ryerson Fiction Award was second only to the Governor General's Award. Authors were encouraged to submit manuscripts to Ryerson, which in turn would publish the winning work.

The Cambridge error is understandable. The award-winning titles I've seen invariably feature a page listing past recipients, similar to the one above from Evelyn M. Richardson's Desired Haven. Each repeats this bit of awkwardness:

THE RYERSON FICTION AWARD

The All-Canada Prize Novels

Most dust jackets add to the confusion in trumpeting "The All-Canada Fiction Award".

The Ryerson Fiction Award... The All-Canada Prize... The All-Canada Fiction Award... Whatever the name, it seems clear that by "fiction" Ryerson meant "novel." As for "All-Canada"? Well, our French-language novelists need not submit.

First presented in 1942, the award moved in fits and starts. There was no recipient in its second year... or its third... no award in 1946, 1948, 1951, 1952 or 1955 either. Some years saw the honour go to two titles. It was last presented in 1960.

Does anyone care about the Ryerson Fiction Award? Did anyone care about the Ryerson Fiction Award? I imagine the winners were delighted, but I see no evidence that it made much of an impression on the public. Only one title, Will R. Bird's Here Lies Good Yorkshire, enjoyed a second printing, and only five have ever appeared in paperback. The academics don't appear to have been much impressed. Writing in Queen's Quarterly, Desmond W. Cole concluded his review of 1958 winner Gladys Taylor's The King Tree:

If this is the "All-Canada Fiction Award" as the dust cover asserts, it has been a slim year for the novel, or at least for the publisher who has the presumption to imply that this is the best work of fiction published in Canada in the past year.

Edward McCourt's Music at the Close is the only title to have been included in the New Canadian Library. Tellingly, I think, the author used the opportunity to revise the text. NCL has since dropped the novel.

All I've seen of the first winner, G. Herbert Sallans' Little Man, is the little jpeg above. A shame. Going by bookseller Stephen Temple's description, Little Man is the Ryerson Fiction Award-winner I'd most like to read:

A novel covering four decades of Canadian life, set in Canada, France and Britain. "The author is merciless in his handling of shoddy Top Hats, fake Utopia Builders, spurious Abundant Lifers and Crack Pots of all sorts." – jacket.

"I remember when this was a very common book that no one wanted," continues Mr Temple. "It is surprisingly scarce, and saleable, in the market today. But it ain't no four figure book, not even close."

That last sentence appears to be a dig at an Oregon bookseller who demands an even US$1000 for a jacket-less copy in Fair condition. Mr Temple's, a Very Good copy in Good dust jacket, is being offered for US$85. My birthday is in August.

The thirteen other Ryerson Fiction Award-winners follow.

I've read one.

You?