The Dusty Bookcase

06 September 2022

The Dustiest Bookcase: Y is for Young

The Dustiest Bookcase:

Short pieces on books I've always meant to review (but haven't).

Psyche
Phyllis Brett Young
Toronto: Longmans, Green, 1959
319 pages

Psyche was Phyllis Brett Young's first book. My copy, signed by the author and inscribed by her mother, was purchased two years ago for £20 from a bookseller in Wallingford, UK. It should have cost me a small fortune.

Canadian literature has not done right by Phyllis Brett Young. Her writing career came and went in ten years – 1959 to 1969 – during which she produced six remarkable books. Well-received, they were published in Canada, the United Kingdom, the United States, and Australia; French, German, Finnish, and Dutch translations followed. And yet, Phyllis Brett Young's name doesn't feature in The Canadian Encylopedia, The Oxford Companion to Canadian Literature, The Cambridge Companion to Canadian Literature or the Encyclopedia of Literature in Canada. I first learned of Young with the 2007 McGill-Queen's University Press reissue of The Torontonians (1960), her second novel.

A novel titled The Torontonians, set in Toronto, written by a Torontonian, rescued from obscurity by a Montreal-based press. At the time, San Grewal wrote a good piece on the novel and its rediscovery for the Toronto Star:

The story of a lost local literary gem, lost and found

McGill-Queen's reissued Psyche the following year.

In thirteen years of the Dusty Bookcase, both here and in Canadian Notes & Queries, the only Young I've reviewed is The Ravine (1962). A psychological thriller, it stands somewhat apart from her other work. The Ravine made my 2019 list of books deserving return to print. Ten months later, it became the fifteenth Ricochet Books title.

The author's three remaining books – Anything Could Happen! (1961), Undine (1964), and A Question of Judgement (1969) – have now been out of print for more than a half-century.

In a country plagued by indifference regarding its literary heritage, Phyllis Brett Young remains the most unjustly neglected writer.

Phyllis Brett Young
1914 - 1996
RIP

Criminal Notes and Queries

01 September 2022

H.C. Mason Votes Twice for September

A celebration of September from Harold Campbell "Hal" Mason's Three Things Only... (Toronto: Thomas Nelson, 1953). Much cheerier than his 'March, 1918' and 'Easter, 1942'.

SEPTEMBER

Let others sing of May and June —
To me it doth appear
September is the finest month
Of all the rolling year.
September days are warm and bright
As children trudge to school,
And weary folk may sleep at night —
September nights are cool.

She borrows from all seasons,
She lends upon them all,
Prolongs the spring and summer
And draws them into fall,
Prepares the way for winter
And yet delays him, too —
September, ah, September,
I vote, both hands, for you!

Now by the reddening apple,
Now by the ripening corn,
By every cheerful pullet
That crackles in the morn,
By harvest safely gathered,
By fields no longer sere,
September is the finest month
In all the rolling year!

Related posts:

'March, 1918' by H.C. Mason

'Easter, 1942' by H.C. Mason

'September Winds' by A.M. Stephen

29 August 2022

The Dustiest Bookcase: X is for X X X

The Dustiest Bookcase:
Short pieces on books I've always meant to review (but haven't).
This one's a cheat.
I reviewed The Whip Angels in this blog's earliest days, but have no other 'X' authors.

CanLit professors hold many, many secrets. Sitting through their lectures, I heard no mention of Grant Allen, Robert Barr, Margaret Millar, Ross Macdonald, Mavis Gallant, John Buell or Phyllis Brett Young. It wasn't until a course titled "American Writers of the Twenties," taught by an American, that I was introduced to John Glassco. Louis Dudek considered Glassco's Memoirs of Montparnasse "the best book of prose written by a Canadian," but it wasn't on syllabi of we 'eighties CanLit students. Those looking to read the book today will find it available only through an American publisher.

Why isn't Memoirs of Montparnasse taught in CanLit courses? Why isn't The English Governess?

Glassco's English Governess stands with his Squire Hardman as the greatest pastiches in Canadian literature. So great was his talent that academics have erred in describing the former as a work of Victorian erotica.

Edward VII was on the throne when Glassco was born. Elizabeth II had begun her long reign when Glassco wrote The English Governess. Victoria was more than a half-century dead.

Published under its Ophelia imprint, The English Governess was an Olympia Press bestseller. When seized by French authorities, publisher Maurice Girodias released a new edition with the title Under the Birch. It is the bestselling Olympia Press book by a Canadian author. The Whip Angels comes second.

The novel was first published in 1955 as by "X X X." Diane Bataille, the woman behind the novel, was born Princess Diane Kotchoubey de Beauharnais on 4 June 1918 in Victoria, British Columbia, She was the second wife of philosopher, librarian, pornographer Georges Bataille. He was her second husband. The Whip Angels may have been written in response to his claim that she'd never be able to write erotica that could stand up to his. Was "X X X" inspired by husband Georges' "Louis Trente" pseudonym? So little is known about Diane Bataille.

The Whip Angels is Diane Bataille's only known novel. It has been suggested that she wrote policiers for money, but evidence is lacking.