A brief addendum to last Monday's post:
Given the once overwhelming popularity of
The Man from Glengarry: A Tale of the Ottawa, it is curious that illustrations depicting its hero are so very few. Connor may have outsold Montgomery, but Ranald Macdonald is no Anne Shirley. I count only a few, beginning with the man on the cover of the Westminster first edition:
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| Toronto: Westminster, 1901 |
This is followed by the rather sinister-looking figure on the cover of Revell's first American:
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| Chicago: Revell, 1901 |
Then there's this depiction, which appears on a poster that Revell sent around to booksellers:
Of course, not one of these is so fantastic as that featured on the Tutis Classics' edition above. Here the God-fearing 19th-century lumberman is recast as some sort of futuristic warrior hovering over a barren wasteland. The effects of clearcutting, I suppose.
Sadly, Tutis is no more. The print on demand house responsible for some of the strangest covers ever closed shop years ago, but not before giving
The Man from Glengarry a new cover. The image isn't the greatest, I know, but it's all we've got; in all likelihood there was no demand. Still, I've been able to identify the man meant to be Ranald Macdonald as George Washington. That isn't the Ottawa Valley, but Valley Forge.
Another time, another place.
I'm happy to say that I grabbed images of the other Tutis Connors before the company's website disappeared. Their offerings began with the author's second novel,
The Sky Pilot: A Tale of the Foothills (1899), the story of missionary Arthur Wellington Moore, who travels west to convert cowboys and settlers in what would one day become the Province of Alberta.
In
The Patrol of the Sun Dance Trail (1914), Corporal Cameron, hero of
Corporal Cameron of the North West Mounted Police (1912), faces the prospect of rebellion along the northern plains of the Saskatchewan.
Often misidentified as a sequel to
The Sky Pilot,
The Sky Pilot in No Man's Land (1919) has handsome Chaplain Barry Dunbar ministering to the troops in the muddy and bloody trenches of the Great War.
Finally, there's
To Him that Hath (1922), a novel set just after the Great War in the fictional town of Black Water, Ontario. Connor drew his inspiration from the 1919 Winnipeg General Strike.
That's it. Just five of the author's twenty-six novels.
Come back, Tutis! I want to see what you'd do with
The Girl from Glengarry, never mind
The Gay Crusader.
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