The Very Best Reads of 2022: Ladies First

Late last night, as Christmas festivities drew to a close, I pulled Victor Lauriston's The Twenty-first Burr (Toronto: McClelland & Stewart, 1922) from the shelves. It seemed appropriate way to end the holiday. One hundred years earlier, my copy was presented by the author to a woman named Olive Shanks.

I enjoyed the first four of its twenty-eight chapters, but know I won't be finishing the novel before year's end, meaning it's time for the annual Dusty Bookcase recap of best reads, books to be revived, etc.

This was a year unlike any other in Dusty Bookcase history. For the first time, women wrote a majority of the titles; twelve of the twenty-two reviewed here and in the pages of Canadian Notes and Queries.

Sara Jeannette Duncan's A Daughter of To-day and Joanna E. Wood's The Untempered Wind stand well above the other twenty. Both are available in Tecumseh's Early Canadian Women Writers Series, which goes some way in explaining how it is that only male authors feature in my annual selection of the three books most deserving of a return to print:

Philistia
Grant Allen

London: Chatto & Windus,

   1901

It was publisher Andrew Chatto who encouraged Allen to try his hand at fiction. This debut novel, first published in 1884, furthers the author's writing on philosophy,  naturalism, religion, and socialism. Ironically, its ending was spoiled by Chatto's intrusion. 

Whispering City
Horace Brown
Pickering, ON: Global

   Publishing, 1947

A noir thriller set in Quebec City, Whispering City pre-dates Hitchcock's I Confess by five years. Both have their weaknesses. Brown's adaptation of the former – likely the first novelization of a Canadian feature film – improves upon its source material.

Moonbeams from the

   Larger Lunacy

Stephen Leacock
Toronto: S.B. Gundy, 1915

Leacock's legacy suffered a blow this year when McGill announced that the building named in his honour, would be renamed after a venture capitalist who had pledged $13 million to the the university.

It's the stuff of a Leacock story.

As series editor of Véhicule Press's Ricochet imprint, I was involved in reviving Arthur Mayse's 1949 debut novel Perilous Passage. 'Telling the Story,' the introduction provided by the author's daughter, Susan Mayse, is one of my favourite in the series. Reprinted in Canadian Notes & Queries, it can be read through this link.

Recognition this year goes to England's Handheld Press for its reissue of Marjorie Grant's 1921 novel Latchkey Ladies.

I knew nothing of Marjorie Grant or Latchkey Ladies before reading this March 22 review in The Times. 

Finally, sadly, I report that the New Year's resolutions made last December didn't go far:

• I resolved to focus more on francophone writers, yet read just one: Philippe-Joseph Aubert de Gaspé (and then only in translation).
• I resolved to feature more non-fiction, and yet this writer of non-fiction reviewed nothing but fiction.
• I resolved to keep kicking against the pricks. This was easily done. Witnessing the  miscreants of the Freedom Convoy roll past on its way to Ottawa gave extra incentive.

This December I make no resolutions.

Here's to the New Year!

Bonne année!

Related posts:
The Very Best Reads of the Second Plague Year (2021)
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)

An Egotist of Yesterday

A Woman Who Did
Spoiled by a Publisher

Quebec City Noir

Lunar Attractions; or, The Leacock I Like

Just Kids

West Coast Canadian Noir

An Egotist of Yesterday

A Daughter of To-day
Mrs Everard Cotes (Sara Jeannette Duncan)
New York: Appleton, 1894

392 pages

Of all the novels I've read this year, A Daughter of To-day has the very best opening scene. Miss Kimpsey, a spinster teacher in small town Sparta, Illinois, calls on local society matron Mrs Leslie Bell. Because her visit is unexpected, Miss Kimpsey must wait in the drawing room. The educator casts an eye about noting volumes on loan from the circulating library, the Revue des Deux Mondes, the Doré print, the arrangement of Japanese dolls, and the absence of bows and draperies:

Miss Kimpsey's own parlour was excrescent with bows and draperies. "She is above them," thought Miss Kimpsey, with a little pang.

Miss Kimpsey is concerned for Elfrida, Mrs Bell's fifteen-year-old daughter. In a recent essay, the girl quoted Rousseau, whom Miss Kimpsey believes "atheistical" and "improper in every way."

When told of this, Mrs Bell hides disappointment in learning that the Rousseau quotation wasn't in the original French.

Elfrida Bell, daughter of to-day, doesn't feature in the first chapter; she is only as others see her... No, that's not right. During their meeting, Mrs Bell presents Miss Kimpsey with a cabinet photograph for which Elfrida "posed herself." The girl is seen as she wants to be seen.

Fairly beautiful and somewhat talented, Elfrida is easily the most graceful and artistic fish in Sparta's small pond. An aspiring painter, she's enrolled in a Philadelphia art school. When results don't meet Mr and Mrs Bell's expectations, Elfrida is sent to study under Monsieur Lucien in Paris. Sadly, her Hungarian cloak draws more notice than her work.

Elfrida desires to be seen by others "as an artist and a Bohemian." That she achieves the latter with no effort – it is in her nature – makes it all the more difficult to acknowledge her limitations in the visual arts:

Elfrida was certain that if she might only talk to Lucien she could persuade him of a great deal about her talent that escaped him – she was sure it escaped him – in the mere examination of her work. It chafed her always that her personality could not touch the master; that she must day-after day be only the dumb, submissive pupil. She felt sometimes that there were things she might say to Lucien which would be interesting and valuable for him to hear. 

Misfortune strikes when Mr Bell's midwestern investments go south. Slim funds are sent overseas so as to enable their daughter's return to Illinois. Elfrida instead makes for London, where she looks to reinvent herself as a writer.

It is both trite and apt to describe Elfrida as complex. A young woman who lives for art and the life of an artiste, her behaviour can be infuriating. "'I know I must be difficult,'" she says when sitting for English portraitist John Kendal:

"Phases of character have an attraction for me – I wear one to-day and another to-morrow. It is very flippant, but you see I am honest about it. And it must make me difficult to paint, for it can be only by accident that I am the same person twice."

Nothing comes quite as one might expect. The author takes a great risk in centring the climax on our heroine's reaction to Kendal's portrait.  

A Daughter of To-Day was read in one go on July 22nd, the hundredth anniversary of Sara Jeannette Duncan's death. It was hard to put down. Writing to-day, I realize it was read too quickly. The more I consider, the more I see – much like Elfrida as she casts a critical eye on her portrait.

Trivia (or not): Sara Jeannette Duncan's mother was born Jane Bell. Elfrida's closest friend is named Janet.

Object: My copy, the first American edition, was purchased earlier this year from a Kentucky bookseller. Price: US$24.95. A thing of beauty, the image above doesn't come close to doing it justice. The novel proper is followed by four pages of adverts for Appleton editions of Rudyard Kipling, Wolcott Balestier, Beatrice Whitby, Egerton Castle, Edward Eggleston, and Maarten Maartens.

Access: First published in 1894 by the Toronto News Company (Canada), Appleton (United States). and in two volumes by Chatto & Windus (Great Britain).

Both the Toronto News Company, and Appleton editions can be read online through the Internet Archive.  

The novel was reissued in 1988 by Tecumseh. Print on demand vultures offer this edition.

That ain't Elfrida Bell.

A Woman Who Did

The Untempered Wind
Joanna E. Wood
Ottawa: Tecumseh, 1994
354 pages

In Henry James Morgan's Types of Canadian Women, published in 1903 by William Briggs, Joanna E. Wood is described as a "well known Canadian novelist."

She is not today.

She was not a half-century ago.

She was not a century ago.

"Meteor-like" is the word Barbara Goddard uses to describe Wood's career. In fact, it ended the very year Types of Canadian Women appeared.

The novelist was all of thirty-five.

Joanna E Wood was twenty-six when The Untempered Wind, her first novel, was published. Its heroine, Myron Holder, has had a child out of wedlock; she is "a mother, but not a wife," and so suffers the scorn of Jamestown, the small Ontario village in which she was born and raised. Myron's own mother is dead, as is her father. Her unloving grandmother is very much alive and shares a modest house with Myron and her baby boy.

When first published in 1894, The Untempered Wind proved a critical and commercial success, encouraging three printings, each featuring the same ten illustrations. The frontispiece was used on the cover of the Tecumseh edition:

Had I been involved in its publication, I would have chosen one of the illustrations depicting Myron. This is my favourite:

Still, I understand the selection. Myron may be the protagonist of The Untempered Wind, but more pages are given over to those so quick to pass judgement. Mrs Deans, the most prominent, leverages her employ of Myron as an act of sacrifice and charity: "I feel a duty to have her here, but it goes ag'in me, Mr. Long [the ragman] it does that; but there, we all have our cross and we must help along as well as we can." Other women of the village visit Myron's grandmother on the pretence of providing sympathy. Each hopes to be the one who uncovers the identity of the child's father, but not even old Mrs Holder knows his name.

Not everyone in Jamestown condemns Myron; some are too drunk to care, while others are oblivious to her situation. This reader was struck by young Bing White, an elfish lad who today's reader will recognise as displaying all the early interests and obsessions of a serial killer:

There was something hideously repulsive in this boy's secret cruelties, horrible to relate, sickening to contemplate. But the creatures he tormented, maimed, killed, knew neither anticipation nor remembrance; the "corporeal pang" was all.

A boy drawn to blood, including his own, Bing is unique in nineteenth-century Canadian literature, as is Jamestown. The village stands in stark contrast with the surrounding farmland as a place poisoned by an atmosphere of envy, greed, cruelty, and hypocrisy:

The Jamestown people, in making a pariah of Myron Holder, were not urged to the step by imperative feeling of hurt honor or pained surprise. Such faults as hers were not uncommon there; but never before had the odium rested upon one only. Besides, there had always been some "goings on" and some "talk" indicative of the affair. In Myron Holder's case, the Jamestown people had been caught napping. In such eases a marriage and reinstatement into public favor was the usual sequel, arrived at after much exhilarating and spicy gossip, much enjoyable speculation, much meditation upon the part of the matrons, and much congratulation that all had ended so well.

Myron is ostracised for not following that well-trod path. After a time, she comes to have a friend in Homer Wilson, by far the most intelligent person in Jamestown, whose ambitions have been crushed by manipulative, guilt-inducing parents. 

The Untempered Wind was first published the year before The Woman Who Did by fellow Upper Canadian Grant Allen. The latter, also a story of an unwed mother, was a succès de scandale. Wood's novel didn't raise as much stink, but it was a success. The three printings by original publisher New York's J Slewing Tait and Sons were followed in 1898 by an Ontario Publishing Company edition.

Together The Untempered Wind and The Woman Who Did stand as two of the most remarkable Canadian novels of the nineteenth century.

Neither was so much as mentioned in my CanLit classes.

Object and Access: A trade paperback with introduction by Klay Dyer, The Untempered Wind is the seventh volume in Tecumseh's essential Early Canadian Women Writers Series. I purchased my less than pristine copy eight years ago at London's Attic Books. Price: $2.23. It's available from the publisher at $17.95 (plus postage) through this link.

Current Literature, November 1894

The Tait and Sons first edition can be read online here, but this scan of the third printing – reproduced in the Tecumseh edition – is much easier on the eyes.

As of this writing, only the Tecumseh edition is listed for sale online.

Related post:

Getting to Know the Woman Who Did

The Dusty Bookcase Christmas Gift List

A trying year all around, right? The Westons have been making out like bandits while we've been obsessing over our PC Optimum points balances. If any good has come out of this pandemic, it's found in communities coming together. Our family isn't alone in choosing to buy our meat, eggs, fruits, vegetables, jams, and honey directly from local farmers.

Take that, Galen Weston!

While we have no local book publishers in Merrickville, Ontario, our household has become even more focussed in spending its money on titles published by Canadian houses. And so, for the first time in Dusty Bookcase history, I present a list of Christmas gift recommendations, beginning with limited editions offered by Biblioasis. The pride of Windsor, the publisher has this year been offering attractive  numbered and signed hardcovers of some of its most recent titles.

I took out a subscription myself, and then found myself spoiled by all sorts of additional treats, like this collection of Indie Bookseller Trading Cards.

No fool I, my package of cards remains unopened. Imagine how much it'll be worth in 2040!

The most recent limited edition, Jason Gruriel's Forgotten Words, was accompanied by advance reader's copies of Randy Boyagoda's Original Prin and Rain and Other Stories by Mia Couto. Also included was this brilliant chapbook:

Take that, Jeff Bezos!

Give a loved one a subscription, if you can. If you've got more or less to spare, the rest of this inaugural Dusty Bookcase Christmas Gift List is as follows:

They Have Bodies

Barney Allen
Ottawa: University of

   Ottawa Press

The literary debut by a novelist I've suggested is Canada's strangest. First published by Macaulay in 1929, I'd been on the hunt for an affordable copy for years. At $29.95, this reissue is a steal. Gregory Betts' informative introduction and notes made me feel I'd really got away with something.

Swallowed [L’Avalée des

   avalés]
Réjean Ducharme [trans

   Madeleine Stratford]

Montreal: Véhicule

L’Avalée des avalés was taught in my Québecoise wife's high school, but not mine; this anglo-Montrealer was well into his thirties before he'd so much as heard of it. The greatest French Canadian novel of the 'sixties is here in the hands of one of our most talented translators.

Hearing More Voices:

   English-Canadian

   Women in Print and on

   the Air, 1914-1960

Peggy Lynn Kelly & Carole

   Gerson

Ottawa: Tecumseh

A study of unjustly neglected English Canadian women novelists, short story writers, humorists, historians, journalists, and broadcasters, including Dusty Bookcase favourites Edna Jaques and Isabel Ecclestone Mackay.

The Complete Adventures

   of Jimmie Dale, Volume

   Two

Frank L. Packard
[np: Michael Howard]

The second in Michael Howard's series of annotated Gray Seal adventures, this volume covers The Further Adventures of Jimmie Dale and Jimmie Dale and the Phantom Clue. It all leads me to wonder why the Gray Seal hasn't made it to television. Walt Disney would agree.

Armand Durand; or, A Summer Project

Armand Durand; ou, La promesse accomplie

    [Armand Durand; or, A Promise Fulfilled]
Madame Leprohon [Rosanna Eleanor Leprohon;
    trans, J.-A.  Genaud], 
Montreal: Beauchemin, 1894
367 pages

In her time, Rosanna Eleanor Leprohon – Madame Leprohon – was more popular with francophones than anglophones, so does it not make sense to tackle this, her third novel, in translation? I thought so. It was my summer project. That the season ended weeks ago speaks to my inabilities, and is no reflection on the novel itself. The story is simple and has a rushed, rather predictable conclusion – but it is deftly told and is populated by fully-drawn characters who live in a Quebec the author knew well.

The novel begins with Paul Durand, descendant of the earliest settlers of New France, who has come to inherit a large and profitable farm in "the seigneurie of — Alonville we will call it — on the banks of the St. Lawrence."* Handsome and hardworking Paul has put off marriage so as not to impose upon his mother, who had lived many, many years in the Durand family farmhouse... until she didn't.

I shouldn't be so flippant. Mère Durand is depicted as a fine woman. After her death, son Paul looks to be in no hurry to take a bride — but then he encounters Geneviève Audut. Newly arrived from France, delicate Geneviève is employed as governess to a pair of thoroughly dislikable children related to the seigneur. Geneviève herself is a relation —a poor relation — whom no one treats her particularly well. Her charges are the worst: "Mamma says we will never learn anything till we have a tutor, and that she would get us one to-morrow, only she does not know what to do with you. No body will marry you as you have no dot."

After overhearing this little shit, Paul proposes to Geneviève, which in turn sends the women of Alonville into a tizzy:

What could he see in her, indeed, a little doll-faced creature with no life or gaiety in her, to bewitch him in such a manner? What made him marry a stranger when there were plenty of smart handsome girls in his own village that he had known ever since they wore pinafores?

Much to their delight, Geneviève proves a disaster in keeping a farmhouse, but Paul Durand loves her to the end... which comes when she gives birth to the titular character. 

Again, I shouldn't be so flippant. Though I could see it coming, Madame Leprohon's description of Geneviève's death touches the heart.

Believing that his infant son is in need of a mother, Paul marries spinster Eulalie Messier, a plain-featured woman of good character, who had been generally recognized as Alonville's youngest spinster. His new bride loves and cares for the infant Armand Durand as her own, and Paul comes to love her as a result. Eulalie wasn't so old an old maid that she couldn't provide her husband with another son. They name him Paul, after his father.

And then, she dies.

I fear I've made Armand Durand seem gothic, when it is really a mélange of melodrama and literary realism. Its depictions of French Canadian traditions and society, which Mary Jane Edwards suggests is the reason behind Madame Leprohon's popularity, was just one element that kept me reading.

With Eulalie's death, focus shifts to the two Durand boys and their schooling at "the old Montreal College." Armand, the more retiring of the two, is the intellectual. Paul, though younger, is both literally and figuratively the bigger brother. He has confidence and brash. Poor Armand, so pretty and slight, becomes a target of his fellow classmates. "Miss Armand," as he's called, is bullied to a point at which he lashes out, bloodying the brute Rodolphe Belfond, after which the two become fast friends.

As the title suggests, Armand comes to take the place of the main character. Paul fis begins to fade with the end of their schooldays, returning to Alonville to help run the family farm. Armand remains in Montreal, working for a lawyer, with the goal of becoming one himself. It all makes sense, and works well until jealousy rears its ugly head. On visits to Montreal, Paul feels like a country bumpkin, and comes to resent the money their father sends to help support Armand. He begins a campaign of lies, implying that the funds are wasted on drink and dandyism. The scheming reaches its apex when Paul Durand pere lies in his deathbed as Paul fis intercepts letters addressed to his older brother. The upshot is that Armand Durand is disinherited.   

Madame Leprohon's greatest challenge in writing this novel must surely have had to do with events following the father's death. Armand marries Delima Laurin, his landlady's niece. Written this way, the decision seems so rash, and yet this reader understood the proposal of marriage and its timing. Sadly, Armand and Delima soon prove themselves ill-suited. 

I'll write no more for fear of spoiling things... and because I'm hoping you'll read it.

I found Armand Durand to be one the finest Canadian novels of the nineteenth-century.

Am I wrong?

Was something gained in translation?

* All quotes come from Rosanna Eleanor Leprohon's original text.  

Object: A fragile volume printed on thin paper, bound in embossed scarlet boards, my copy once belonged to the Bibliotheque de Chénéville. It was purchased earlier this year from a Gatineau bookseller. Price: C$19.41. I see no evidence that it was a discard. Should I be concerned?

Access: Armand Durand first appeared as a serial on 1 October 1868 in the Montreal Daily News. That same year, the novel was published in book form by John Lovell. That edition can be read — gratis — through this link at the Internet Archive.

The novel is in print today, with introduction by Loraine McMullen and Elizabeth Waterston, as part of Tecumseh's Early Canadian Women Writers Series. It can be ordered here, thorough the press.

Pay no heed to print on demand vultures. Take it from a Montrealer, this isn't Quebec:

The Tecumseh edition aside, I see no copies of Armand Durand — English or French —listed for sale online.

As might be expected, this once-popular novel has come to be the stuff of academe. The only copy I see in a public library can be found in Toronto.