Showing posts with label Moore (Brian). Show all posts
Showing posts with label Moore (Brian). Show all posts

27 April 2023

New Perspectives on Brian Moore


Received in the post yesterday, the latest Canadian Journal of Irish Studies. A special issue dedicated to the work of Brian Moore, it features contributions by:

Aoife Bhreatnach
Janet Friskney 
Alison Garden
Tom Groenland
Michele Holmgren
Sinéad Moynihan
Stephen O'Neill

I was invited to contribute after participating in 2021's Lonely Passions: The Brian Moore Centenary Festival. My essay 'Montreal Means Murder: Brian Moore as Canadian Paperback Writer,' concerns the writer's early pulp novels.

My thanks to Sinéad Moynihan for her editorial guidance and to Jim Fitzpatrick whose research aided my contribution.

Copies of the special Brian Moore issue can be ordered through the Canadian Association of Irish Studies website.

Related posts:

16 January 2023

James de Mille's Antarctic Death Cult



A Strange Manuscript Found in a Copper Cylinder
[James de Mille]
New York: Harper & Bros, 1888
306 pages

Forty years ago this month, I sat on a beige fibreglass seat to begin my first course in Canadian literature. An evening class, it took place twice-weekly on the third-floor of Concordia's Norris Building. I was a young man back then, and had just enough energy after eight-hour shifts at Sam the Record Man.

The professor, John R. Sorfleet, assigned four novels:

James de Mille - A Strange Manuscript Found in a Copper Cylinder (1888)
Charles G.D. Roberts - The Heart of the Ancient Wood (1900)
Thomas H. Raddall - The Nymph and the Lamp (1950)
Brian Moore - The Luck of Ginger Coffey (1960)

These were covered in chronological order. I liked each more than the last. The Luck of Ginger Coffey is the only title I would've wholeheartedly recommended, which is not to suggest that I didn't find something of interest in the others.

The earliest, A Strange Manuscript Found in a Copper Cylinder, intrigued because it overlapped with the lost world fantasies I'd read in adolescence. Here I cast my mind back to Edgar Rice Burroughs' Pellucidar, my parents' copy of James Hilton's Lost Horizon, and of course, Arthur Conan Doyle's The Lost World.

De Mille's novel begins aboard the yacht Falcon, property of lethargic Lord Featherstone. The poor man has tired of England and so invites three similarly bored gentlemen of privilege to accompany him on a winter cruise. February finds Featherstone and guests at sea somewhere east of the Medeira Islands, where they come across the titular cylinder bobbing in becalmed waters. Half-hearted attempts are made at opening the thing, until Melick, the most energetic of the quartet, appears with an axe.


As might be expected – the title is a bit of a spoiler – a strange manuscript is found within. Its author presents himself as Adam More, an Englishman who, having been carried by "a series of incredible events to a land from which escape is as impossible as from the grave," sent forth the container "in the hope that the ocean currents may bear it within the reach of civilized man."

More would have every right to feel disappointed.

Featherstone and company, while civilized, are not the best civilization has to offer. In the days following the discovery, they lounge about the Falcon taking turns reading the manuscript aloud, commenting on the text, and speculating as to its veracity.


More writes that he was a mate on the Trevelyan, a ship chartered by the British Government to transport convicts to Van Dieman's Land. This in itself sounds fascinating, but he skips by it all to begin with the return voyage. Inclement weather forces the Trevelyan south into uncharted waters "within fifteen hundred miles of the South Pole, and far within that impenetrable icy barrier which, in 1773, had arrested the progress of Captain Cook."

No one aboard the Trevelyan is particularly concerned – the sea is calm and the skies clear – and no objections are raised when More and fellow crew member Agnew take a boat to hunt seals. Fate intervenes when the weather suddenly turns. In something of a panic, the pair make for their ship, but efforts prove no match for the sea. They are at its mercy, resigned to drifting with the current, expecting slow death. And yet, they do find land, "a vast and drear accumulation of lava blocks of every imaginable shape, without a trace of vegetation—uninhabited, uninhabitable." A corpse lies not far from the shore:
The clothes were those of a European and a sailor; the frame was emaciated and dried up, till it looked like a skeleton; the face was blackened and all withered, and the bony hands were clinched tight. It was evidently some sailor who had suffered shipwreck in these frightful solitudes, and had drifted here to starve to death in this appalling wilderness. It was a sight which seemed ominous of our own fate, and Agnew’s boasted hope, which had so long upheld him, now sank down into a despair as deep as my own. What room was there now for hope, or how could we expect any other fate than this?
More and Agnew provide a Christian burial and return to their boat hoping, but not expecting, to be carried to a better place. Whether they find one is a matter of opinion. The pair pass through a channel that appears to have been formed by two active volcanoes, after which they encounter humans More describes as "animated mummies." They seem nice, until they reveal themselves as cannibals. Hungry eyes are cast on Agnew. He's killed and More escapes.  

A Strange Manuscript Found in a Copper Cylinder is not a Hollow Earth novel, though inattentive readers have described it as such. More's boat enters a sea within a massive cavern, where he encounters a monster of some sort and fires a shot to scare it off.


The boat continues to drift, emerging on a greater open sea. It's at this point – 53 pages in – that the real adventure begins.

Here More encounters the Kosekin who, despite their small stature, appear much healthier than the animated mummies who killed and consumed his friend Agnew. They're also extremely generous, ever eager to give More whatever his heart desires. He is soon introduced to Almah, a fair beauty who, like himself, is not of their kind.


Through Almah, More learns the language, customs, and culture of the Kosekin and their topsy-turvy polar world. They are a people who crave darkness and shun light. Self-sacrifice serves as the shell surrounding their core belief, so that they look to rid themselves of wealth and influence. The least is the most venerated. The local Kohen, whom More comes to know best of the Kosekin, shares a sad story:
"I was born," said he, "in the most enviable of positions. My father and mother were among the poorest in the land. Both died when I was a child, and I never saw them. I grew up in the open fields and public caverns, along with the most esteemed paupers. But, unfortunately for me, there was something wanting in my natural disposition. I loved death, of course, and poverty, too, very strongly; but I did not have that eager and energetic passion which is so desirable, nor was I watchful enough over my blessed estate of poverty. Surrounded as I was by those who were only too ready to take advantage of my ignorance or want of vigilance, I soon fell into evil ways, and gradually, in spite of myself, I found wealth pouring in upon me. Designing men succeeded in winning my consent to receive their possessions; and so I gradually fell away from that lofty position in which I was born. I grew richer and richer. My friends warned me, but in vain. I was too weak to resist; in fact, I lacked moral fibre, and had never learned how to say 'No.' So I went on, descending lower and lower in the scale of being. I became a capitalist, an Athon, a general officer, and finally Kohen."
Again, 'tis sad, but the Kohen's own weakness is to blame. He displays greater strength when confronting his own mortality. Like all Kosekin, the Kohen longs for the day when his life will end. His people refer  to Death as the "King of Joy." Almah does her best to explain to a disbelieving More:
"Here," said she, "no one understands what it is to fear death. They all love it and long for it; but everyone wishes above all to die for others. This is their highest blessing. To die a natural death in bed is avoided if possible."
The Kohen tells the story of an Athon who had led a failed attack on a creature in which all were killed save himself. For this, he was honoured: 
“Is it not the same with you? Have you not told me incredible things about your people, among which there were a few that seemed natural and intelligible? Among these was your system of honoring above all men those who procure the death of the largest number. You, with your pretended fear of death, wish to meet it in battle as eagerly as we do, and your most renowned men are those who have sent most to death.”
A Strange Manuscript in a Copper Cylinder shares something with Burroughs in that adventure, prehistoric beasts, and a love interest figure. What sets it apart is the quality of writing; De Mille's is by far the superior. No doubt some readers – my twelve-year-old self would've been one – will be irked by Lord Featherstone and his three guests, who see in More's manuscript an opportunity to philosophize and expound theories on linguistics, geography, and palaeontology. Oxenden, the quietest of the group, speaks up providing the most fascinating passages in remarking on the similarities in Kosekin, Christian, Jewish, Buddhist, and Hindu beliefs.


Melick alone expresses skepticism in More's story, dismissing the manuscript as a bad romance: "This writer is tawdry; he has the worst vices of the sensational school – he shows everywhere marks of haste, gross carelessness and universal feebleness." Unflattering comparisons to DeFoe and Swift are drawn.

A Strange Manuscript in a Copper Cylinder demonstrates none of the things Melick describes. Forty years later, I have no hesitation in recommending the novel; it is richer and more rewarding than I remembered.

Wish I'd known what my thoughts were on first reading. There may be a paper written for Prof Sorfleet's class in the crawlspace beneath our living room.

Object and Access: All evidence suggests that A Strange Manuscript Found in a Copper Cylinder was written in the 1865 and 1866. It was first published posthumously and anonymously in the pages of Harper's Weekly (7 Jan 1888 - 12 May 1888). My copy, a first edition, features nineteen plates by American Gilbert Gaul. The copy I read as a student was #68 in the New Canadian Library (1969). I still have it today, along with the Carleton University Press Centre for Editing Early Canadian Texts edition (1986). Neither was consulted in writing this review, but only because they're in that damn crawlspace.

The NCL edition is out of print, but the Centre for Editing Early Canadian Texts edition remains available, now through McGill-Queen's University Press. It has since been joined by another scholarly edition from Broadview Press (2011).

Used copies of are easily found online. Prices for the Harper & Bros first edition range between US$65 and US$400. Condition is a factor, but not as much as one might assume. The 1888 Chatto & Windus British first (below) tends to be a bit more dear.

Translations are few and relatively recent: Italian (Lo strano manoscritto trovato in un cilindro di rame; 2015) and Hindi ( एक तांबा सिलेंडर में पाया एक अजीब पांडुलिपि, 2019).


26 December 2021

The Very Best Reads of the Second Plague Year


This annus horribilis draws to a close – thank God – meaning the time has come to recap the last twelve months of reading old books. I tackled a bunch, twenty-one of which were reviewed here and in the pages of Canadian Notes & Queries. I'm counting Arthur Stringer's 1936 novel The Wife Traders and its British reworking, Tooloona, as two.

Fight me.

They're two different books... and having slogged my way through both, I've earned it.

Stringer proved to be this year's most read author, though I'm at a loss to explain why. I read four books by this son of Chatham, which is more than the previous seven years combined. The majority were pretty awful, but one made it onto my annual list of the three out-of-print reads most deserving a return to print:

Ted Allan
Toronto: McClelland &
   Stewart, 1977

Forget The Scalpel, the Sword,  this is the Ted Allan book you want to read. And yes, I'll again point out the wonderful Quentin Blake illustrations.

Get it while you can, then share it with the children in your life.

The Shadow
Arthur Stringer
New York: Century, 1913


Better known under the later (superior) title Never-Fail Blake, this story of one man's relentless drive to bring another to justice was one of Stringer's most reprinted thrillers. Today, it is all but forgotten. It doesn't deserve that fate.


Poldrate Street
Garnett Weston
New York: Messner, 1944


This was the second Weston novel read this past summer. Where the first, The Legacy of Fear, disappointed, Poldrate Street entertained as the year's most unpleasant, stomach-turning read. Voyeurism, adultery, greed, murder, and something approaching necrophilia figure. No disappointment here!


Three of the books I reviewed this year are currently in print:

Dear Departed stands out as a relatively new book. The first true collection of Brian Moore short stories, it features writing that originally appeared between 1956 and 1961. Dear Departed was published just last year by Belfast's Turnpike Books, but went almost unnoticed in the author's adopted land. The only review I've seen or heard is Randy Boyagoda's on The Next Chapter

Having been elevated in 2012, Grant Allen's An African Millionaire (1897) holds certain distinction as a Penguin Classic. Much as I like the novel, I wonder why. The Woman Who Did is a much better, more interesting, more enduring, and more culturally significant work.

Never mind.

Give An African Millionaire a read, but if you want Allen at his best I recommend The Woman Who DidThe Devil's DieFor Mamie's Sake, Michael's Crag, Under Sealed Orders, Hilda Wade, What's Bred in the Bone or The British Barbarians.

Brash Books is in the process of returning every Tom Ardies novel to print. The author's second, This Suitcase is Going to Explode (1972) has the defeated hero of the first, Charlie Sparrow, pick himself up to save us all. The third and final Sparrow novel is titled Pandemic (1973), in which he saves us from same.

 At least, I think he does.

Praise this year goes again to Stark House (first recognized in 2012) for its continued dedication to the work of Douglas Sanderson (aka Martin Brett, aka Malcolm Douglas). This year, the publisher put one foot outside its usual crime territory in publishing Dark Passions Subdue, which I reviewed here ten years ago. Sanderson's debut novel, it concerns a male McGill student's attraction to another man.

Dark Passions Subdue was first published in 1952 by Dodd, Mead. The next year, Avon brought it out as a mass market paperback. The McGill University Library does not have a copy of either edition. Now's its chance.

I was involved in the reissue of only one novel this year. Due to production matters, it's been pushed into next. Here's something to look forward to in the New Year:

Resolutions? I have a few:
  • I will focus more on francophone writers;
  • I will review more non-fiction;
  • I will keep kicking against the pricks.
Here's to a better New Year!

Bonne année!

Related posts:

The Very Best Reads of a Plague Year (2020)
The Very Best Reads of a Very Strange Year (2019)
Best Books of 2018 (none of which are from 2018)
The Year's Best Books in Review - A.D. 2017
The Year's Best Books in Review - A.D. 2016
The Year's Best Books in Review - A.D. 2015
The Christmas Offering of Books - 1914 and 2014
A Last Minute Gift Slogan, "Give Books" (2013)
Grumbles About Gumble & Praise for Stark House (2012)
The Highest Compliments of the Season (2011)
A 75-Year-Old Virgin and Others I Acquired (2010)
Books are Best (2009)

Arthur Stringer Unshackled (then bowdlerized)
Little Willie, Willie Won't Go Home
A Shadow Moves Through a Showy Underworld
The Dead of a Dead End Street
Fumbling Towards Legacy
Shorter Moore
Starting on on Grant Allen: A Top Ten
Getting to Know The Woman Who Did
A Nineteenth Century What's Bred in the Bone
Grant Allen Tells Us Like It Is
Criminal Notes & Queries
Have Bomb – Will Travel
The Jacket, the Dressing Gown and the Closet

27 September 2021

Six Forgotten Novelists at the Atwater Library


This coming Thursday – September 30 – I'll be speaking on "Forgotten Montreal Novelists" at the Atwater Library.

Forgotten Montreal novelists? Where to begin! I've selected six. I'll be talking about their lives with a focus on a novel by each.

These being strange days, I won't be appearing in person. Wish I could. The good thing is that you can watch through Zoom. The link to register is here.

C'est gratuit!

22 September 2021

The Dead of a Dead End Street


Poldrate Street
Garnett Weston
New York: Messner, 1944
256 pages


The first resident of Poldrate Street to die is Sarah Reckon. She's killed by two of her neighbours while stealing flowers from their gardens. Sarah's murder has nothing to do with theft, rather her discovery of a missing dog. Though she doesn't realize it – and never will – the mutt is key in a scheme involving extortion, embezzlement, fraud, mutilation, and sexual slavery.

Three more Poldrate Street residents will die over the next few days. A fourth will be drugged, kidnapped, and then drugged again. That's a lot of activity for a cul de sac consisting of just five houses. 

Eleven people live on Poldrate Street – ten after Sarah is killed. She lived in the first and most modest of its houses. Next to her were Mr and Mrs Gordon and their pre-adolescent son nicknamed "Face." To the reader, theirs is the most mysterious household, but only because the parents are never depicted. Face, on the other hand, plays a prominent role in the novel, despite his young age. He sees a lot of what others miss, mostly because he's a voyeur. It's Face's dog that is missing.

Doctor Ivor Palling lives in the middle house with a raven-haired bombshell named Violet. Everyone believes her to be the doctor's wife, but they're not actually married. Palling spotted Violet waiting at a bus stop one rainy night and offered her a lift. You could call her a pickup.

The fourth house is the home Jacob Sleep, the most elderly resident of Poldrate Street. Sleep had been living his final years alone when he received a letter from an old schoolmate asking whether he might care for her granddaughter. The poor girl had been orphaned, and the grandmother feared that she herself was not long for this world. Turned out she was right. And so, that is how nineteen-year-old Kitty McKay came to live with an old man on a dead end street. Sleep's interest in the girl begins and ends with her sizeable inheritance (of which she has no knowledge).

The last house belongs to Mafia Breene; it's also his place of business. An undertaker, Breene struggles to make a living dealing in the dead. He has some support from Cora, his live-in maid. In her quarters lies the tenth resident of Poldrate Street, Cora's motionless, voiceless, nameless, suffering child known only as "Him."

Of the Garnett Weston novels I've read, Poldrate Street is the very best. As far as I can tell, it's the only one to have enjoyed multiple editions. The second, published in 1945 by American Mercury, gives something away in providing a new title: The Undertaker Dies.

The last, published in May 1950 by Harlequin, uses the original title. Seven decades later, it remains the only Canadian edition. Its cover art, by Max Ralph, captures something of the book. 


Violet does bathe in the nude in her backyard fountain, though her hair should be black. Kitty McKay witnesses this and a whole lot more from a tree in Joseph Sleep's garden. Her hair should be red. The houses on Poldrate Street are Victorian, but not nearly so large as that depicted. The juxtaposition of the imagined house and the brewery makes perfect sense; the street has houses on one side and a brewery wall on the other. Most peculiar. The dining couple in the lower left-hand corner are something of a mystery. The scene doesn't feature in the novel. I'm certain that the lower right-hand corner is meant to depict Cora shooting her boss, though she is described as a rather large woman.

Things are revealed by the American Mercury title and in the Harlequin cover illustration. I've revealed even more myself – but not so much as to spoil the novel. Poldrate Street is populated by uncommon characters with unusual names. Pleasure comes in their interactions.

Not every character is a success. Kitty isn't much more than a pretty face. Her attraction to Jimmie Lane, Sarah Reckon's boxer nephew – it was in anticipation of his visit that she was gathering flowers that fateful night – exists only to elevate the burgeoning rivalry between her and Violet.

Ah, Violet... Violet is a full-bodied character. A femme fatale when first encountered, she gradually reveals herself as insecure and self-hating. Violet's greatest fear is that her exotic beauty might mean she had parents from different races. Her sexual encounters with Mafia Breene and Jimmie Lane – two last spoilers – have everything to do with her desire to be desired. She goes so far as to flirt with young Face, and thinks of him as a future prospect.

Awful things happen to awful people.

Despite its flaws – which are minor – Poldrate Street is by far the most interesting and entertaining novel I read this summer. Published just two years after Garnett Weston quit Hollywood, I very much doubt he had motion pictures in mind when formulating the plot – there's no way it could have passed the Hays Code. And yet, reading the novel I couldn't help but imagining Poldrate Street onscreen. The novel has all the ingredients of a brilliant limited series. 

Now is its time.

It's a shame that Poldrate Street is so obscure.

Dedication:

R. Rowe Holland was chairman of the Vancouver Parks Board and treasurer for the Liberal Party. A barrister, he represented Vancouver theatre owners. In 1932, he was part of a failed campaign to build a large movie studio in the city. In short, he wanted to make Vancouver Hollywood North.

Trivia: Max Ralph holds distinction as the cover artist for Wreath for a Red Head, the very first novel by Brian Moore. Canadian Fly-By-Night has a very good series on Ralph's work for Harlequin.

Beware!: The American Mercury edition is abridged. 

I suspected the Harlequin – 185 pages of text to Messner's 248 – to also be abridged, but Canadian Fly-By-Night's bowdler has convinced me otherwise. The word-count of the Messner is roughly 380 words per page, while the Harlequin is at least 500 per page. 

Object: A hardcover with yellow boards, all evidence indicates a single Messner printing. The jacket illustration is uncredited. The figure is meant to be young Face Gordon. The flashlight he carries was a reward for selling magazines door-to-door. Weston describes the beam it casts as white, not yellow.

I purchased my copy for US$37.50 from a New York bookseller. The shipping set me back a further US$25.00. 

Access: Copies of the Messner Poldrate Street can be found in Library and Archives Canada, Queen's University, the University of Toronto. the University of New Brunswick, the University of British Columbia, and the University of Victoria.

As I write this, no copies of Poldrate Street in any edition are listed for sale online. Ditto The Undertaker Dies.

Related post:

09 September 2021

Talking about Brian Moore's Pulp Fiction



My conversation with Joanna Braniff about Brian Moore's early pulp novels – part of last month's Lonely Passions: Brian Moore Centenary Festival – is now available online. 


We discuss Moore's Montreal years, his work at The Gazette, the plots of all seven pulps, and how writing things like French for Murder helped bring about Judith HearneThe Feast of Lupercal. and The Luck of Ginger Coffey.

Oh, and there's also a bit about Moore's work with Hitchcock.

Lili St Cyr is mentioned.

16 August 2021

The Brian Moore Centenary Festival (and Me)



This coming Thursday, August 19th, marks the start of Lonely Passions: The Brian Moore Centenary Festival. A seven-day celebration organized by Belfast's Paradosso Theatre, it kicks of with an evening event featuring Colm Toíbín, Bernard McLaverty and Tara Ison. Hugh Odling-Smee will host.

The festival features sixteen events in total. I'm participating in one, this coming Saturday, in which I'll discussing Brian Moore's Montreal years and seven pulp novels with the brilliant Joanna Braniff.


Because of bloody Covid, this is a virtual event. On the positive side, the only ticket you'll need to attend is the one that can be purchased through this link.

Please do consider.


02 August 2021

Shorter Moore



Dear Departed: Selected Short Stories
Brian Moore
[Belfast]: Turnpike, 2020
102 pages

Brian Moore was first and foremost a novelist. He received Governor General's Awards for The Luck of Ginger Coffey and The Great Victorian Collection, and was thrice nominated for the Booker. Dear Departed is the first collection of his short stories. Its appearance last year was so late in coming as to be unexpected. The publisher added to the surprise; there was a time in this country when a collection of Moore stories would have been published by McClelland & Stewart or Knopf Canada.

"Grieve for the Dear Departed," lends the collection its name. It was first published alongside Hemingway, Wilder, Frost, Thurber, and Dinesen in the November 1957 centenary edition of The Atlantic. In the story, a recently widowed woman grieves, but the dear departed of the title isn't so much the husband as the son who had left Ireland for a new life in the New World.

The longest and best of these short stories, "Uncle T," is one Moore salvaged and reworked from the aborted novel that was to have followed Judith Hearne. Vincent Bishop, newly married to Barbara, gazes out of their hotel room overlooking Times Square. The two met in Canada, to which he had fled from a future teaching secondary school in an Ulster town, "forty lumps of boys waiting at forty desks, rain on the windowpanes, two local cinemas, a dance on Saturday nights."

As a refuge, Canada was as good as anywhere. Vincent had applied for work as a clerk in the Shan State, a shipping aide in Takoradi, a plantation overseer in British Guiana, ending up teaching secondary school in Toronto. There's unstated irony in this.

Vincent is convinced Toronto is but a stop on the way to much greater things, and has convinced his bride as much. Uncle Turlough, whom he has yet to meet, has offered him a senior position with his New York publishing house.

There are elements of autobiography in these stories, particularly in the troubled relationships between fathers and sons. Moore described "A Vocation," the first story in the collection, as "about the only thing I can consciously remember writing about my early childhood.

Its first two sentences.
 In the beginning was the Word. And the Word was "No."
Biographer Denis Sampson tells us that "Off the Track," easily the darkest of these stories, reflects a holiday Moore and his first wife took to Haiti. "Hearts and Flowers," easily the lightest, was surely inspired by Moore's time at the Montreal Gazette. A Christmas story set in the "Old Bowerie Mission" (read: Old Brewery Mission), it's a mystery that it hasn't appeared in any collection of Canadian Yuletide stories.

Moore published only fourteen short stories during his lifetime, eight of which are collected here. Added to the remaining six are unpublished stories found amongst his papers. 

One hopes Turnpike is considering a second volume. The press is doing God's work.

Object and Access: A slim trade-size paperback. This collector placed an overseas order, hoping for a first edition. Instead, I received his:

Still, I was pleased to see it had done so well in such a short time.

McGill University has a copy.

21 August 2020

In Search of Margerie Scott


The Windsor Daily Star, 10 April 1951

Until this year, I'd never heard of Margerie Scott. Her name doesn't appear in The Canadian Encyclopedia, The Dictionary of Canadian Biography, The Oxford Companion to Canadian Literature, The Cambridge Companion to Canadian Literature, or the Enyclopedia of Canadian Literature. Three of her five novels were published by McClelland & Stewart – once "The Canadian Publisher" – but I'd never come across copies. My introduction came by way of an American, Scott Thompson of Furrowed Middlebrow, who mentioned her in this February post. "It's possible that Margerie Scott belongs on a Canadian women writers list," writes Mr Thompson.

Margerie Scott was born in 1897 at Leeds. If her publishers' author bios are correct, she received some part of her education in Belgium. Edith Margery Waite was her name at birth; "Scott" was added when she married Canadian Hubert Scott. According to the author, she lived in Canada ten years between the World Wars. During the second conflict, she served as chief billeting officer for the London borough of Chelsea. When the fighting stopped, she worked briefly for the Entertainments National Service Association before returning to Canada for another decade.

Throughout both Canadian stints, Windsor served as her home. She threw herself into society, volunteerism, and amateur theatre. Margerie Scott's name appears in nearly two hundred editions of the Border Cities Star and Windsor Daily Star, this from the 18 September 1956 edition of the latter being an example:


Scott also wrote theatre, film, and book reviews for the Star. My critique of Andre Langévin's Dust Over the City is at odds with hers.

The Windsor Daily Star
24 Sept 1955
I'm not sure we would have much agreed on things literary. In her lecture "The Short Story and Its Place in Modern Letters," covered in the Border Cities Star (22 September 1931), Margerie Scott described O. Henry and Rudyard Kipling as the greatest short story writers of the day. An Anderson, Fitzgerald, and Mansfield man, I take issue.

And then there's this:
Until recent years, the short story has been somewhat despised [emphasis mine]. The novel was the real work. But today, people are giving most of their time to perfecting the technique of the short story, which includes concise presentation of an idea, with an introduction, climax and completion.
More often than not, the Border City Star and Windsor Daily Star refer to Margery Scott as a short story writer. I've managed to track down twenty, most of which were published in long-dead magazines like Breezy Stories, Young Realistic Stories, Britannia and Eve, and The Canadian. One source records that she is the same E.M. Scott who  contributed "The Voyage to Kleptonia" to the October 1928 edition of Amazing Stories.


I don't quite doubt it.

Because her stories were never collected, I think of Margery Scott as a novelist. Life Begins for Father (1939), her debut, appears to have been written off; it received no mention in her subsequent books. In his surprisingly long 22 April 1939 Windsor Daily Star review, "Windsorite Resembles Dad in Novel," critic Angus Munro praises the novel as a "first class story of life in modern London."

My own first book dealt with people who inspired characters in Canadian literature, so you can understand my interest in this paragraph:


A Yorkshireman himself, Tom Waite emigrated to Canada in 1927, settling in Windsor. His profile in the January 1928 edition of Canadian Golfer is quite impressive.


There's more to be learned about Margery Scott. I've only started digging.

For now, the question remains: Does Margerie Scott belong on a Canadian women writers list?

I would say so. How about you?

Related 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)

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