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Maclean's, 1 November 1920

Best Books of 1922: Amidst a Flood of Mediocrity

Published one hundred years ago today, the 1922 Globe round-up of the year's noteworthy books doesn't display much by way of enthusiasm. The three pages – previous years had five – begin with a reference to something once said by long-dead Englishman George Crabbe. It really sets the tone:

The trend may be away from fiction, but fiction makes for nearly half of the Globe's list. And I can't help but note that not one science title features.

The newspaper's greatest focus is on "GENERAL FICTION," by which it means fiction that is not Canadian. Babbit is recognized as the year's big title. I can't quibble because I still haven't read it. I have read The Beautiful and Damned, which doesn't feature.

My copies of the first Canadian editions

The big work of "CANADIAN FICTION" is Ethel M. Chapman's God's Green Country, a novel that is new to me. Here's what the Globe has to say:

God's Green Country is long out of print, as is every other Canadian fiction title selected by the Globe:

The Return of Blue Pete - Luke Allan [Lacey Amy]

Flowing Gold - Rex Beach

Chalk Talks - J.W. Bengough

Indian Legends of Vancouver Island - Alfred Carmichael

God's Green Country - Ethel M. Chapman

King's Arrow - H.A. Cody

Caste - W.A. Fraser

Pagan Love - John Murray Gibbon

D'Arcy Conyers - Bertal Heeney

Mortimer's Gold - Harold Horn

The Timber Pirate - Charles Christopher Jenkins

The Bells of St Stephens - Marian Keith

The Dust Flower - Basil King

The Twenty-first Burr - Victor Lauriston

Openway - Archie P. McKinshie

Over 'ere and Back Home - P. O'D

Tillicums of the Trail - George C.F. Pringle

Poisoned Paradise - Robert W. Service

Neighbors - Robert Stead

The Prairie Child - Arthur Stringer

Salt Seas and Sailormen - Frederick William Wallace

The Shack Locker - Frederick William Wallace

Ignore Flowing Gold; a Texas adventure by American Rex Beach, its inclusion is a mistake. Of the twenty-one truly Canadian titles, I've read only Basil King's The Dust Flower.  It may be the author's weakest novel – I have ten left to tackle – but I'm not surprised that it made the cut. What does surprise is the absence of Bertrand W. Sinclair's The Hidden Places, which may just be the best Canadian novel of 1922.

My collection of the Globe's 1922 Canadian fiction titles.

Four that didn't make the list.

In its selection of Canadian fiction titles, the Globe demonstrates a certain preference. Hinted at in the praise of God's Green Country, it is stated plainly in the description of D'Arcy Conyers.* 

We get all too few of such?

Really?

Most Canadian novels dating from this time have rural settings.

More, please?

The Globe is most complimentary in its opinion of Canadian verse, but not before taking a dig at the Mother Country: "In Britain, during the past year, deflation has not been confined to finance, and poetry scarcely rises above the horizon." But Canada, young Canada, imbued with "national sentiment stimulated by the war, receives refreshing satisfaction from the study of the poet's message."

Nine of the fourteen volumes of verse are Canadian:

Jean Blewett's Poems - Jean Blewett

Complete Poems of Wilfred Campbell - Wilfred Campbell

Contrasts - Lawren Harris

Complete Poems of Archibald Lampman - Archibald Lampman

Fires of Driftwood - Isabel Ecclestone Mackay

The Woodcarver's Wife and Later Poems - Marjorie L. Pickthall

Christ in the Strand and Other Poems - James A. Roy

Verse and Reverse - Toronto Women's Press Club

Impressive... until one realizes that Complete Poems of Wilfred Campbell and Complete Poems of Archibald Lampman do not exist. Going by the descriptions, I'm sure what's being referred to are The Poetical Works of Wilfred Campbell and yet another edition Archibald Lampman's Poems (first published by Morag in 1900). I own two earlier editions of the latter and a very nice copy of Isabel Ecclestone Mackay's Fires of Driftwood. Am willing to trade all three for a first of Lawren Harris's Contrasts.

We Canadians don't do nearly as well in the rest of the list, nearly falling flat in the "JUVENILE" category – two titles in a list of thirty-four – but we hold our own overall in contributing 47 of the Globe's 167 titles.

Of the forty-seven, Over Prairie Trails by Frederick Philip Grove is in print today as a New Canadian Library title. New Canadian Library being no more, it's old stock now housed somewhere in a Penguin Random House warehouse.

What else is in print?

Nothing?

Oh, Canada.

* In researching Bertal Heeney's D'Arcy Conyers, I stumbled upon the work of British actor, director, and screenwriter Darcy Conyers (1919-1973). Amongst his many accomplishments is the screenplay for the 1961 comedy The Night We Got the Bird. The IMDb summary promises an evening of good fun:

Cyril's family is unaware that he and his cabinet-maker employee are making and selling false antique furniture. It is only when he dies and his salesman Bernie marries his widow Julie that the truth comes out through Cecil re-appearing as a parrot, puzzlingly given as a wedding gift. When a local Brighton heavy realises he's been conned the family band together to try and fix things. 

Related posts:

The 1921 Globe 100 206: Don't Mention the War 

Best Books of 1920: Beware the Bolshevik Poets

The Globe 100 One Hundred Years Ago: Poets are Struck Dumb

and Capitalism Proves Embarrassing (1919)

The Globe 100 178 of 2018

The Season's Best Books in Review - A.D. 1917:

The String of Canadian Patriotism is Fingered

The Season's Best Books in Review - A.D. 1916

The Season's Best Books in Review – A.D. 1915;

Featuring the Best Canadian Book Ever Published

A Gentleman's Gentleman Cultivates a Lady

Sex, Betrayal, and the Scars of the Great War

'December' by S. Frances Harrison

An old poem for the New Month by daughter of Toronto Susie Frances Harrison (née Riley; a/k/a Seranus). This version comes from her second collection, Pine, Rose and Fleur de Lis (Toronto: Hart & Co, 1891).

DECEMBER

I long for a noble mood. I long to rise,

Like those large rolling clouds of ashen pink

That deepen into purple, over strife

And small mechanic doings. How superb

That landscape in the sky to which I walk,

And gain at will a spacious colour-world,

In which my finer self may feel no fear!

The distance far between that goal and me

Seems lightly bridged; breathless, I win that goal—

The shores of purple and the seas of gold.

Below, how flat the still small earth—a sphere

That only the leaden soul takes solace in!

The long pine stretches, barred in sombre black,

Cross at right-angles fields that are gray with snow—

Not white, but gray, for all the colours is here,

Colour—a new sacrament—melted gems,

The hearts of all water-lilies, the tips of their wings—

Young angels', plumed in topaz, garnet, rose—

The dazzling diamond white, the white of pearl.

How poor a place the little dark world appears,

Seen from this gold-cloud region, basoned in fire!

Only a step away, and nothing is seen

Of the homes, huts, churches, palaces it bears

Upon its dry brown bosom. There remains

But the masterful violet sea, that angrily

This moment somewhere gnashes its yellow teeth

Against a lonely reef. What's most like God

In the universe, if not this same strong sea,

Encircling, clasping, bearing up the world,

Blessing it with soft caresses, then, for faults,

Chiding in God-like surges of wrath and storm?

But the ocean of cloud is placid, and the shores,

Rolled up in their amethyst bulk towards the stars,

Fade noiselessly from pearl to purple dark.

The shades fall even here. Here—not exempt

From death and darkness even these shining airs—

The night comes swifter on than when on earth.

The fringes of faintest azure, where the bars

Of paler cloud are fading into gray,

Are dulled and blotted out. Opaque has grown

The molten in one moment; fleecy pale

And ghastly all the purple lonely then,

And awed to horror of those glacial peaks,

I bridge the vaporous barrier once again,

And tread the despised earth. Then how too dear

Doth the rude, common light of earth appear—

That of a street lamp, burning far, but clear!

The sign of human life, of human love,

Of habitation sweet, of common joys

And common plans, though precious, yet not prized,

Till in a moment's fancy I had lost them.

John McCrae: 150 Years

November 30, 1872, Guelph, Ontario
 January 28, 1918, Boulogne-sur-Mer, France

RIP