Whither the Canadian American Bestseller?

Earlier this month, I tried to sell a friend on Basil King, as is my habit. I mentioned that in 1909 his novel The Inner Shrine outsold every other book in the United States, adding that he very nearly repeated that accomplishment the following year, and again the year after that. In this regard, King bested fellow Prince Edward Islander L.M. Montgomery, who never once made the annual top ten.

The annual top ten?

I refer here to lists compiled by The Bookman and Publisher's Weekly. The former cobbled together the first in 1895, the year Scotsman Ian Maclaren's Beside the Bonnie Brier Bush was all the rage. It didn't take long for a Canadian to appear. In 1896, Gilbert Parker's The Seats of the Mighty placed third, blocked from the top spot by Francis Hopkinson Smith's Tom Grogan and A Lady of Quality by Frances Hodgson Burnett, which I'm sure you've all read.

Gilbert Parker – later, Sir Gilbert Parker – was a publisher's dream. Scribner's 1912 twenty-four volume Works of Gilbert Parker is a beautiful thing. The more expensive editions come with a tipped in handwritten autographed letter.

And there was more to come! In 1914, Sir Gilbert's The Judgement House ended up as the republic's fourth best-selling book.

Parker is one of eight Canadians to hit the American year-end top ten. What follows is a year-by-year list  of those authors and their titles, beginning with Parker's The Seats of the Mighty. Some may question the inclusion of Saul Bellow and Arthur Hailey. My position on both men is simple. Saul Bellow was born in Lachine, Quebec. He was a nine-year-old when his family left Canada for the United States. Arthur Hailey immigrated to this country after the Second World War and became a Canadian citizen.

Long-time Toronto resident John Irving's The Hotel New Hampshire, which placed second in 1981, is not included because it wasn't until 2019 that he became a Canadian citizen.

W.H. Blake's translation of Louis Hémon's Maria Chapdelain, which in 1922 was the eighth bestselling book in the United States is excluded. Though the novel has been described as a "a classic of French-Canadian literature," Hémon was French, not French-Canadian. His visit to this country lasted months, not years. My late friend Michael Gnarowski argued that Hémon would've become a citizen had he not been struck and killed by a train whilst walking the tracks outside Chapleau, Ontario. On this we disagreed.

1896

#3 – The Seats of the Mighty by Gilbert Parker

"A Romance of Old Quebec" with cameos by Wolfe and Montcalm, The Seats of the Mighty was the only Parker novel to been adopted as a New Canadian Library title. It's available today through Wilfrid Laurier Press.

1901 

#4 – The Right of Way by Gilbert Parker

A Montreal melodrama involving amnesia, murder, drinking, romance, and false identity, I raced through The Right of Way last year. Recommended.

Two spots down from Parker – at #6 – we find The Visits of Elizabeth, the debut novel by one-time Guelph girl Elinor Glyn.

1902

#6 – The Right of Way by Gilbert Parker

The Right of Way again, and why not! It's a hell of a story, as evidenced by the fact that it was adapted for Broadway. Hollywood took it on three times!

1907

#2 – The Weavers by Gilbert Parker

"A Tale of England and Egypt of Fifty Years Ago," this one concerns a young Quaker who brings the Gospel to the Land of the Pharaohs. Must admit that each time I see this title I hear "Goodnight, Irene." 

#9 – The Doctor by Ralph Connor [Charles W. Gordon] 

I've not read this Connor, but Ron Scheer did. Sadly, Ron is no longer with us. I miss his scholarship and astute criticism. Happily, his blog survives. Ron's review of The Doctor is a fine example of his work.

1908

#10 – The Weavers by Gilbert Parker

The Weavers again, yet unlike The Right of Way, this one never made Broadway, nor was it adapted by Hollywood.

Seems an opportunity.

1909 

#1 – The Inner Shrine by Anonymous [Basil King]

Reverend King's sixth novel, The Inner Shrine was the year's literary sensation. I think that much of the interest had to do with questions over authorship. Did it come from the pen of Edith Wharton? Henry James? How about the daughter of Willian Dean Howells?

 

1910

#3 – The Wild Olive by the author of The Inner Shrine [Basil King]

Publisher Harper maintains the mystery.

I once described The Wild Olive as the best Basil King novel I'd ever read. Ah, but that was seven years ago and I was so young; The Empty Sack and The Thread of Flame are even better.

1912

#2  – The Street Called Straight by the author of The Inner Shrine [Basil King]

Shortly after The Street Called Straight was published, Reverend King revealed himself as the author of all three books. He continued to have success commercially, but his books never again appeared in the year-end top ten.

1913

#4 – The Judgement House by Gilbert Parker

Lesser-known today – but then isn't Parker himself? – The Judgement House is set against the backdrop of the Boer War. Apparently, a femme fatale features. You can bet I'll be ordering a copy!

1918

#7 – The Major by Ralph Connor [Charles W. Gordon]

One of Connor's Alberta novels, as expected, it was heavily influenced by the Great War. Germans and their country's imperialist aspirations don't come off nearly so well as settlers establishing themselves on the Prairies.

1919

#5 – The Sky Pilot in No Man's Land by Ralph Connor [Charles W. Gordon]

A Great War novel, complete with horrors. The author served as Chaplain in the 43rd Cameron Highlanders. I have more to say on this in an old post on New Canadian Library intros.

1927

#5 – Jalna by Mazo de la Roche

The book that launched the longest running series of novels in Canadian history. Sixteen in total! 

1928

#9 – Jalna by Mazo de la Roche

Jalna. Of course, Jalna. Do not get me started on the CBC's disastrous The Whiteoaks of Jalna, which at age ten served as my introduction to the works of Mazo de la Roche, and nearly killed my interest in Canadian literature.

1931

#8 – Finch's Fortune by Mazo de la Roche

Interestingly, Finch's Fortune is the third volume in the Jalna saga; Whiteoaks of Jalna, the second, failed to make the year-end top ten.

 

1933

#7 – The Master of Jalna by Mazo de la Roche

The last in the series make the year-end top ten, which is not to say that Jalna was abandoned by the reading public. The surprisingly brief de la Roche Canadian Encyclopedia entry reports: "Jalna novels have sold 9 million copies in 193 English- and 92 foreign-language editions."

 

1945

#3 – The Black Rose by Thomas B. Costain

The Black Rose sold over two million copies. I learned this courtesy of The Canadian Encylopedia's entry on Costain, which is even shorter than de la Roche's!

More anon.

#9 – Earth and High Heaven by Gwethalyn Graham

The author's second and final novel, I've made the argument that its success had a paralyzing effect. Earth and High Heaven was to have been a film starring Katherine Hepburn, but Gentleman's Agreement, which deals with similar material, put an end to all that.

1946

#8 – The Black Rose by Thomas B. Costain

The Black Rose is a historical novel about a young Saxon's adventures in thirteenth-century China. I'm not much taken by the idea, but millions were. To be frank, I'm much more interested in the Hollywood adaptation starring Orson Welles, Tyrone Power, and Cécile Aubry, but not so much that I've seen it.

1947

#2 – The Moneyman by Thomas B. Costain

Apparently, Thomas B. Costain wrote four unpublished historical novels in high school, one of which focussed on Maurice of Nassau, Prince of Orange. The Moneyman takes as its inspiration the life of Jacques Couer, royal banker to Charles VII of France.

1949

#7 – The High Towers by Thomas B. Costain

One of two historical novels Costain set in what is now Canada; the other being Son of a Hundred Kings (1950). It was through my father's copy of the 1950 Bantam paperback edition that I was introduced to Costain. and so I share its cover and not Doubleday's bland and predictable jacket illustration.

 

1952

#1 – The Silver Chalice by Thomas B. Costain

Here Costain enters Lloyd C. Douglas territory with the tale of Basil of Antioch, a sensitive silversmith who is commissioned to decorate the chalice used by Christ in the last supper.

1953

#2 – The Silver Chalice by Thomas B. Costain

The novel continued to sell, but I wonder whether Costain missed the opportunity to write a sequel inspired by the burial of the Holy Grail on Oak Island by the Knights Templar.

1955

#9  – The Tontine by Thomas B. Costain

Book of the Month Club copies once littered every church rummage sale. The same might be said of many BOMC selections, but what set The Tontine apart was that it was published in two volumes, meaning that there were twice as many seemingly identical books. I never managed to pair volumes one and two. 

1957

#9 – Below the Salt by Thomas B. Costain

New to me, Below the Salt marked a bit of a departure for Costain. It relies on the theory of reincarnation, linking a modern-day senator (American) to a thirteenth-century serf (English).

1964

#3 – Herzog by Saul Bellow

How to explain Herzog's presence? It was awarded the National Book Award, but so had The Adventures of Augie March, and so would Mr. Sammler's Planet, and they didn't make the year-end top ten.

1965

#3 – Herzog by Saul Bellow

In my first year of university I found a very nice first edition in dust jacket. I've carried it from home to home ever since, but it was only in putting this piece together that I saw the face in the cover.

That perfect font is so distracting.

#8 – Hotel by Arthur Hailey

In Hailey's bibliography, Hotel follows In High Places (1962), a political thriller centred on challenges both domestic and international faced by Canadian prime minister James McCallum. Hotel doesn't sound nearly so interesting, though it did inspire a 1967 feature film and the ABC prime time soap of the same name starring James Brolin. 

1968

#1 – Airport by Arthur Hailey

The novel that spawned Airport, Airport 1975, Airport '77, The Concorde - Airport '79, Airplane!, and Airplane II: The Sequel,  Airport was the second Canadian novel I ever read. I think there were some sexy bits, but I'm not sure. If they existed, they weren't so memorable as the stuff in Harold Robbins' The Carpetbaggers.

1971

#1 – Wheels by Arthur Hailey

A novel set inside the Detroit auto industry. Interestingly, the ten-hour five-part 1978 NBC mini-series starring Rock Hudson and Lee Remick is set in the 'sixties. It's a period piece, though you wouldn't know it.  

1975

#2 – The Moneychangers by Arthur Hailey

The idea of a novel centring on banking, finance and investing doesn't sound nearly so interesting as one about a sleek and powerful car, which may explain why The Moneychangers failed to land at #1. It was kept from top spot by E.L. Doctorow's Ragtime. 

1979

#3 – Overload by Arthur Hailey

Here the author whose previous novels were set in the hospitalty industry, the aviation industry, the automotive industry, and the banking industry, presents a 512-page novel focussed on a California utility company.

There will be brownouts!

And that's it.

Arthur Hailey went on to write three more novels: Strong Medicine (1984), The Evening News (1990), and Detective (1997). All were bestsellers, but not so much that they dominated the bestseller lists. He died in 2004, the eighth and last Canadian to have written a book that landed in the year-end top ten.

Between 1896 and 1979 eight Canadians wrote twenty-seven novels in the annual list of top American bestsellers. Six of the twenty-seven titles appeared two years running. These figures are impressive, until one realizes that all happened within an eighty-three-year span, and that it's been forty-three years since any Canadian writer has done the same. Margaret Atwood? Not even The Testaments. Life of Pi didn't make the cut, nor did The English Patient.

Why is that?

All my theories have fallen flat.

Any ideas?

Related posts:

Born Again Infidel
Nor Very Occult

The Barefoot Fugitive and Other Mysteries

a/k/a Frank Tarbeaux
About Those Old New Canadian Library Intros

The Paralyzing Success of Gwethalyn Graham

Domestic Suspense in Small Town Ontario

M'Lord, I Am Not Guilty
Frances Shelley Wees
New York: Doubleday, 1954
222 pages

M'Lord, I Am Not Guilty begins after a moment of high drama. A woman has been found not guilty of murdering her husband. The jury foreman sweats and sits as the presiding judge delivers his concluding remarks. The Toronto court room then empties in an orderly fashion.

No one is satisfied.

Members of the public are frustrated by the lack of resolution. Mrs Graham, mother of the murdered man, seethes – not for want of justice, but because a guilty verdict would've handed over her son's fortune. Helen, the accused, is unhappy that her name was not cleared. She thinks of her young son, Jamie, and worries how he'll get on in the world when some maintain that his mother murdered his father.

With the aid of her late husband's fortune – half a million dollars! – Helen sets out to clear her name. A book of forged cheques leads to a nicely furnished flat and diaphanous red negligee. There's no shock in this – Helen knew her husband was a cad – the value of the discovery comes in its connection to the town of Mapleton, a growing bedroom community not far from Toronto. There's a woman there, a curvaceous woman, with whom her husband had been carrying on.

Helen is so dedicated in her pursuit that she purchases and moves into a newly-built bungalow that borders the property of the curvaceous woman and her family. The young widow believes she's alone in her investigation, but she is wrong. Jonathan Merrill, "psychological consultant to the Toronto police," has long been on the case. His sister Jane spent several fruitless months snooping as Mrs Graham's maid, and has now found employ in Helen's new home. Constable Harry Lake, Merrill's right hand man, passes himself off as a gardener, and manages to get work tending to neighbourhood lawns.

As Helen, Jonathan, Jane, and Harry watch for someone to slip up, next-door neighbour Burke Patterson, a commercial artist, begins showing an interest in the widow. He's attractive enough, and seems a nice fellow, but why did he paint all those portraits of the curvaceous woman?

Wees's depiction of a post-war bedroom community, complete with country club, catty wives, bland business-minded husbands, and free-flowing liquor, forms much of the novel's appeal. And then there's the hanging suggestion that Helen's husband may not have been  murdered at all, but simply miscalculated the dosage of his sleep medication. Might adultery be the only crime?

With the novels of Margaret Millar and Wees's own The Keys of My Prison, it is one of the finest examples of Canadian domestic suspense.

Trivia: M'Lord, I Am Not Guilty first appeared in a condensed version as I Am Not Guilty (Ladies' Home Journal, February 1954). I much prefer the latter title. How 'bout you?

More trivia: M'Lord, I Am Not Guilty is the first novel to feature Jonathan Merrill, Jane Merrill, and Constable Harry Lake. The trio next appear in This Necessary Murder (1957). The model for Merrill was Toronto publicist and magazine writer James A. Cowan.

Object: A cheaply produced hardcover consisting of white boards and cheap paper, my horribly damaged copy is a book club edition. It was purchased last May for sixty cents (with a further $7.80 for shipping and handling). The jacket design is by Fred McCarroll. I wonder why "A NOVEL OF SUSPENSE" is so downplayed.

Access: M'Lord, I Am Not Guilty was first published by in 1954 by Doubleday. Used copies aren't plentiful online, but they are cheap. At US$20, the most expensive, a Very Good copy of the first edition, is the one to buy.

It also appeared – supposedly in full, though I'm not convinced – in Northern Lights, a 1960 Doubleday Book Club anthology selected by George E. Nelson. Mazo de la Roche wrote the introduction!

The last M'Lord, I Am Not Guilty saw print was in 1967 as a Pyramid Gothic title. It is not a gothic novel. The cover depicts Helen much as she's described in the novel. But is that really Toronto? Sure as hell isn't Mapleton. And who's that in the background? The judge?

There has been just one translation, the German Mylord, ich bin nicht schuldig. First published in 1960, I see at least two editions:

Copies of M'Lord, I Am Not Guilty are held by Library and Archives Canada, the Bibliothèque et Archives nationales du Québec, and seven of our university libraries. Frances Shelley Wees lived the better part of her adult life in Stouffville, Ontario, so how is it that the Whitchurch-Stouffville Public Library doesn't have a single one of her books?

Related posts:

This Necessary Read

A Rival for Margaret Millar?

The Return of Frances Shelley Wees

Who Is Canada's Outstanding Novelist? (1945)

Critic William Arthur Deacon isn't much discussed these days – or even much recognized – but for a good part of the last century he was Canada's foremost literary champion. As book editor, he held sway for forty years in the pages of the Manitoba Free Press (1921), Saturday Night (1922-28), the Mail & Empire (1928-36), and the Globe & Mail (1936-61),

I've taken a few swipes at Deacon over the years, including this one in defence of Collins White Circle. His judgement was often questionable – Robert Norwood? Really? – but I do admire his enthusiasm and dedication. Looking through his correspondence, it sometimes seems he was in touch with anyone who ever penned a novel, poem or play in this Dominion. Dorothy Dumbrille was one such person. It was in researching her second novel All This Difference (the subject of a forthcoming review), that I came upon the following comments published on 3 February 1945 in "The Fly Leaf," Deacon's weekly Globe & Mail column. It's interesting not only a snapshot of a dire time in the country's literature, but as a reflection of Deacon's aforementioned questionable judgement.

I've added the covers of what were then the most recent books by the authors Deacon mentioned. My comments are in italics.

Most frequently asked and least answerable is the question. Who is Canada's Outstanding Novelist? This week it came in the form of a request to choose between Morley Callaghan, Mazo de la Roche, Frederick Philip Grove and Hugh MacLennan. Fortunately, there is no towering genius in Canadian fiction to prevent others from receiving attention. In these early days, the notable acts are that Canadian authors display the most varied preferences for subject and style treatment and that readers also differ widely in their judgments.

The Building of Jalna
Mazo de la Roche
New York: Little, Brown, 1944

Certainly the works of Miss Mazo de la Roche have attained a world-wide popularity far beyond those of any other Canadian writer in any field. Her Jalna fixation is the result of stupendous demand. Millions of people in many countries are familiar with the Whiteoaks family.

Miss de la Roche's Jalna fixation was then nine novels into its sixteen novel run.

More Joy in Heaven
Morley Callaghan
New York: Random House, 1937

The Master of the Mill
Frederick Philip Grove [pseud. Felix Paul Greve]
Toronto: Macmillan, 1944

Mr. Callaghan showed exceptional talent as a member of the Hemingway school and seems to be going into partial eclipse with it. It is some years since he published a new book. Very different in type, Frederick Philip Grove, a somewhat heavy writers merits too solid to be ignored. He brought into Canadian fiction an intellectual and artistic integrity that was and is important. Neither the novels of Mr. Grove nor those of Mr. Callaghan have been specially popular.

It had been seven years since Callaghan had published a novel. Four more years would pass before the next, Luke Baldwin's Vow. It's considered a children's book.

Barometer Rising
Hugh MacLennan
Toronto: Collins, 1941

It is comment enough on the impression of Barometer Rising that my correspondent should include Hugh MacLennan in the quartet. Two Solitudes, when it is in circulation, will do much to reinforce Mr. MacLennan's position as a potential best Canadian novelist. He will be watched to the last comma.

Two months later, when it was "in circulation," Deacon wrote, "Two Solitudes may well be considered the most important Canadian novel ever published." It remains MacLennan's best-known novel (though The Watch That Ends the Night is much better).

Earth and High Heaven
Gwethalyn Graham
Philadelphia: Lippincott, 1944

But there are plenty of others. Gwethalyn Graham's Swiss Sonata placed her among the leading Canadian novels [sic], as Earth and High Heaven has now elevated her to a similar prominence among American novelists.

Earth and High Heaven was Graham's second novel. It followed Swiss Sonata, her first, by six years. She never wrote another. I speculate as to the reason here.

The Pied Piper of Dipper Creek
Thomas H. Raddall
Toronto: McClelland & Stewart, 1943

Forges of Freedom
Franklin Davey McDowell
Toronto: Macmillan, 1943

The Higher Hill
Grace Campbell
Toronto: Collins, 1943

Thomas M.H. Raddall, author of Roger Sudden, His Majesty's Yankees and Pied Piper of Dipper Creek, may well wind up as the Canadian novelist whom everyone reads. Franklin Davey McDowell has already, in The Champlain Road, given Canada one novel of permanent worth and his far-finer Forges of Freedom deserves a much wider public than it has reached. Grace Campbell has a very large and ever-growing audience for her two books.

I studied Raddall in university, but not The Pied Piper of Dipper Creek. Decades passed before I so much as heard of The Champlain Road, despite the fact that it won the 1939 Governor General's Award for Fiction (The Pied Piper of Dipper Creek won in 1943). Another decade passed before I learned of Franklin Davey McDowell's "far-finer" Forges of Freedom. I've never so much as seen a copy, and could find no better image of the book than the screen grab presented above. Grace Campbell was much easier.

Carrying Place
Angus Mowat
Toronto: Saunders, 1944

Among the new writers of higher promise is Angus Mowat, who is sure to be a writer intensely admired by other writers. I think his books will endure as long as any written in our generation.

Father of Farley, Angus Mowat wrote just two novels: Then I'll Look Up (1938) and Carrying Place (1944). His enduring books have been out-of-print for over seven decades. 

Thirty Acres [Trente arpents]
Ringuet [pseud. Philippe Panneton; trans. Felix & Dorothy Walter]
Toronto: Macmillan, 1940

But there are now so many dozens of these Canadian novelists. Ringuet's Thirty Acres, for instance, comes pretty near to  being a perfect performance. Alan Roy Evans [sic] is another up near the top in merit. I have faith in the sensitive abilities of Jessie L. Beattie and wish she would publish more. Alexander Knox, playwright and actor, did one exquisite novel of the Ottawa Valley, called Bride of Quietness, before turning to better-paid work. He should be induced to continue with fiction. And so on... and so on.

The English translation of Ringuet's Trente arpents was a staple of the New Canadian Library and is still published in the original French. Allen Roy Evans is one of those odd Canadian writers who achieved far greater sales in a language other than their own. Der Zug der Rentiere, the German translation of his 1935 fictionalized memoir Reindeer Trek, has enjoyed at least six different editions. When Deacon wrote his column, Evans' newest work was All in a Twilight (1944). I've never seen a copy, and can find no image online. Ditto Jessie L. Beattie's Three Measures (1938) and Alexander Knox's Bride of Quietness (1933). That said, I have seen Knox in film adaptations of Nicolas and Alexandra, Joshua Then and Now, Tinker Tailer Soldier Spy, and Gorky Park. More than anything, I remember him acting opposite Edward G. Robinson in The Sea Wolf.

It may be of great ultimate advantage in our literature that the variety of cultural backgrounds among Canadians precludes any uniformity in our fiction and in the tastes of Canadian readers. But we waste talent shockingly. I think of a woman like Irene Baird writing two novels like John and Waste Heritage and then being allowed to sit back and write no more. Darkly the River Flows will be along shortly to launch a new novelist, John MacDonald, and the manuscripts of other men in the armed services will presently be in print. Florence Randal Livesay, also, might do another novel to the advantage of all and sundry.

Darkly the River Flows
John MacDonald
New York: Coward-McCann, 1945

Deacon seems unaware that Irene Baird followed up John (1937) and Waste Heritage (1939) with He Rides the Sky (1941)... another book I've never seen. I've had better luck with John MacDonald's Darkly the River Flows. Sadly, the novel-writing days of Florence Randal Livesay, Dorothy's mother, were in the past. Her last novel, Savour of Salt, was published in 1927 by Dent.

We have not had time yet to acquire perspective, but I have no doubt that the fiction of this era will finally be judged to be relatively as fine as the Canadian poetry produced between 1880 and 1920.

W.A.D.

Deacon lived another three decades after writing those words. Did they offer enough perspective to make him realize he'd been wrong? Most of the fiction of that era pales beside Carman and Lampman. You may take issue, but can we at least agree that the absence of a towering genius is not "fortunate"?

Related posts:

Canada's Best 100 Books? 102? 111?
First Ignored, Then Slighted
The Paralysing Success of Gwethalyn Graham