Sex and the Trudeaus: The Bachelor Canada

Sex and the Single Prime Minister
Michael Cowley
[Don Mills, ON]: Greywood, 1968

The Naked Prime Minister
Michael Cowley
[Don Mills, ON]: Greywood, 1969

Ezra Levant soiled himself last month. That in itself isn't noteworthy, except that this ended up being another of those times in which his employers had to come in for emergency clean-up.

What happened was this:  On 12 September, Justin Trudeau was meeting at the Markham Hilton when he came upon a wedding party. The groom asked if he'd agree to have photos taken with the bride and bridesmaids. Someone yelled out that Trudeau should give the bride a kiss on the cheek. The Liberal leader asked the newlyweds for their okay, then did just that.

“Look at the photo," Levant shrilled, "a young, beautiful bride half Trudeau’s age – he turns 43 this year. She’s dressed in white, it’s her special day – hers and her groom’s – and Trudeau kisses her. That’s what he does.”

For God's sake, Justin, she's dressed in white! C'mon, man.

"I suppose what you think of this photo depends in part on what you think of weddings and marriages and fidelity and faithfulness," said the twice-married Levant. "If they're no big deal to you, this photo is no big deal, right? The idea of the nobleman of the estate, riding through like in medieval times to deflower whatever maidens he wanted, that's still there in Trudeau."

Never mind that the medieval droit du seigneur is a myth – Levant isn't much good when it comes to history – the man is trying to make a point. The point is this: Justin Trudeau is a son of privilege. He is his father's son. He is his mother's son.

“Both Pierre Trudeau and Margaret Trudeau were promiscuous, and publicized how many conquests they had. They didn’t even pretend to keep their oaths to each other,” said Levant. Justin Trudeau's father "banged anything. He was a slut.” Mom "didn't wear panties."

Watching Levant rant, you'd think we're a land of looney eunuchs. We're not, nor are we nearly so puritanical as the pundit. I think most Canadians would agree that the media have no business in the bedrooms of the nation. Norm Spector will confirm. This is what makes Michael Cowley's Sex and the Single Prime Minister and The Naked Prime Minister so unusual.  The 'sixties had something to do with it, I suppose, as did the sudden elevation of a charismatic. single man to the office of prime minister. Images like this attract:

Barbra Streisand doesn't figure in either book, though The Naked Prime Minister does include a rather flattering photo of Her Majesty the Queen.

(cliquez pour agrandir)

I've written about this sort of thing before in reviewing I Never Promised You a Rose Garden, which was also published by Greywood. I noted then that the format owes something to Private Eye; I note now that the word balloons aren't quite so clever.

Here are seven more examples, beginning with a nice shot of the space now occupied by Stephen Harper, and ending with a botched reference to Stephen Vizinczey's In Praise of Older Women.

Ribald? You bet!

Trudeau, père, took Cowley's captions in stride, even going so far as to write the author a polite note of acknowledgement. Trudeau, fils, reacted to Levant's tirade in an entirely different way by boycotting Sun News.

It's perfectly understandable.

Levant has been trying to take down for Trudeau for years. That he's proved himself impotent must surely grate. Given the pundit's history, it comes as no surprise that he'd spread a lie or two about a man's family – or even a couple on their wedding day:

I’m pretty sure I can guess what her groom would say, or her groom’s family, or her own father and mother. Justin Trudeau thinks he’s in the movie Wedding Crashers, that sex comedy where slutty men go to weddings uninvited to bed the maids of honour, but even they had enough class to give the bride herself a pass. I’m not saying Trudeau got sexual with this bride. I’m just saying he invaded a personal intimate day.

Of course, Justin Trudeau did nothing of the kind. The person who invaded the couple's "personal intimate day" was Ezra Levant.

Covered in his own filth, the Sun News Network's loudest voice has yet to apologize to anyone... not even the young bride dressed in white.

Bonus:

Emperor Haute Couture, Margaret Sullivan, 2011

The naked prime minister (no sex).

Objects and Access: Surprisingly sturdy staple-bound books, 64 pages in length, I bought both last year from a London bookseller. Price: $3.00 each.

Several copies of Sex and the Single Prime Minister and The Naked Prime Minister are listed for sale online. They range in price from US$3.83 to US$29.95. Condition is not a factor.

As might be expected, few Canadian libraries hold copies. Sex and the Single Prime Minister can be found in the Parliamentary Library.

Related posts:

Sex and the Trudeaus: Son and Hair

Pierre Elliott Trudeau, Ladies Man

Margaret's Marriage in Mass Market

Sex and the Trudeaus: Son and Hair

Justin Trudeau's memoir was released this morning, two days after what would've been his father's 95th birthday, one year (less a day) before the next federal election. The former is a coincidence.

Reviews are already in. Hours before pub date, customer critic "Page" posted a one-star review under the title "Shows how arrogant JT really is" at chapters.indigo.ca. This, of course, begs a question: Just how arrogant do you have to be to dismiss a book you haven't read?

By comparison, the attack dogs at Sun News have been slow off the mark. Who can blame them? They're still gnawing on last week's Chatelaine profile of Trudeau and his young family. Why just hours ago, it posted as its "VIDEO OF THE DAY" a segment dealing with same from Michael Coren's Agenda.

"I'm not going to pretend that I read Chatelaine magazine; I'm not sure many people read Chatelaine at all," said Coren of Canada's highest circulation magazine. This country's most incompetent book reviewer went on to describe the article as "one of the most callow, fawning pieces I have ever seen". Paige MacPherson of Sun News joined in to form a most impassioned circle jerk. Said she of the article:

It talks about Justin in this glowing fawning sort of a way, as well as his wife and his children, and it's certainly I don't think befitting of the title of the article, which we showed there, 'Is Justin Trudeau the Candidate Women Have Been Waiting For?'. Well, as a woman, at the end of this article I have no idea if he's the candidate that I've been waiting for because it doesn't say anything about him as a politician or as a candidate for prime minister of our country.

As a man, I won't presume to weigh in on the issue, except to note that the title takes the form of a question. We agree on that right? Can we also agree that its author, Carol Toller, has a good deal to say about Trudeau as politician?

Michael Coren seizes bullshit by the horns in focusing on the above photo:

People don't usually, as an entire family, in their clothes, get into the swimming pool unless they're all mentally ill. They've obviously been told by the photographer, "Let's do this. It's warm enough. We'll take the photo." And we're meant to think this is normal Trudeau behaviour.

Two things about this statement:

• Michael Coren is either forgetting – or trying to remind, none too subtly – that Justin Trudeau's mother suffers from bipolar disorder. The affliction is thought to be hereditary, dontcha know.
• In the article, Ms Toller writes that "someone" suggested the family jump in the pool. Trudeau, we are told "laughs it off, then pauses as though he can see it – how it’ll play on the page, how it’ll showcase their sense of fun, project a 'Canadian political dynasties are just like you' insouciance."

How it'll play out on the page? How it'll "project a 'Canadian political dynasties are just like you' insouciance"? Really? In an article that "doesn't say anything about him as a politician"?

By this point, Sun was reporting – incorrectly – that Chatelaine had endorsed Justin Trudeau. Things moved from being underhanded, ignorant, clumsy and stupid to otherworldly when Coren pretended to be very familiar with Chatelaine – which, you'll remember, is a magazine he doesn't read. "They always profile political figures in an infantile way", said the host, comparing the family profile to an opinion piece the magazine had published eight years earlier. Ms MacPherson then ruined the narrative:

I have to say, in fairness, there was a lifestyle piece on Stephen Harper and his family as well, but it was nowhere the glowing, fawning piece this very long – basically – essay on how wonderful and carefree the Trudeaus are. It was nothing compared to that.

You see, the real problem with "Is Justin Trudeau the Candidate Women Have Been Waiting For?" isn't that it's a puff piece, but that it's puffier than the one written about the Harpers.

Just about the worst part to a fellow like Coren is this line: "Many voters aren’t sweating the details: They already like what they see in Trudeau – his storied lineage, his youthful energy, his awesome hair."

"How could any journalist sleep at night having written 'awesome hair' in a profile of a man who might well be the next prime minister?" the host asked.

I suggest Coren consult his colleagues at Sun News, who have described Mr Trudeau's hair as "great" (Brian Lilley), "great" (Lorne Gunther), "great" (John Robson), "luxurious" (Monte Solberg), "fantastic" (Simon Kent), "beautiful" (Ezra Levant) and "beautiful" (Ezra Levant, again). Christina Blizzard remarked that the Liberal leader has "nicer hair than Harper". Does it say something about Sun that so many of its men, and so few of its women, obsess over Justin Trudeau's hair?

Michael Coren himself has written about the man's "great hair". My favourite of his articles is the one in which he writes of Trudeau's "nice hair, good looking, cute smile, famous and clever dad, 'interesting' mum."

That's right, "'interesting' mum."

However does Michael Coren sleep at night?

Related posts:
Sex and the Trudeaus: The Bachelor Canada
Margaret's Marriage in Mass Market

Condemned by Coren

Amazon Customers: Mavis Gallant Was a Stuck Up Intellectual Who Wouldn't Deliver Her Books

A bonus:

Related posts:

Homophobes and Book Burners Weigh In

The Return of the Amazon Customer Review

Much Ado About Anne

Ce soir: Hommage à Louis Hémon

Hommage à Louis Hémon

Parrainé par le Writers' Chapel Trust

Vous êtes invités à assister au dévoilement d'une plaque commémorative.

Micheline Cambron (Université de Montréal) prendra la parole.

Vendredi, 17 Octobre, 2014 à 18:00

Église Anglicaine de Saint James the Apostle

1439 rue Sainte-Catherine, Ouest

Une réception avec vin et fromage suivra l'événement.

Louis Hémon Tribute

Sponsored by The Writers’ Chapel Trust

You are invited to attend the unveiling of a commemorative plaque.

Micheline Cambron of the Université de Montréal will speak.

 Friday October 17, 2014 at 6 p.m.

St. James the Apostle Anglican Church

1439 St. Catherine Street West

A reception with wine and cheese will follow.

Related posts:

John Glassco Memorial Plaque

A.J.M. Smith Memorial Plaque

F.R. Scott Memorial Plaque

Hugh MacLennan Memorial Plaque

Gwethelyn Graham Memorial Plaque

Touched in the Head by a Telepathic Virgin

Soft to the Touch
Clark W. Dailey
Toronto: News Stand Library, 1949

Caroline Prentiss entertains her male visitors – and she has many – in revealing robes and diaphanous negligees. She loves to kiss and encourages caresses, but don't you go getting any ideas about taking things further. At twenty-six, Caroline guards her virginity like no one, convinced that it is tied inextricably to her independence.

Understandably, swains swarm, but quickly fall away in frustration. Only two, playboy Harvey Garrett and lawyer Larry Devlin, show any stamina. Both have been pursuing Caroline for years, each pitching woo and proposing marriage. With a girl on the side, I think Harvey has had an easier time of it; poor love-struck Larry has been leading the life of a celibate.

Caroline is content with the status quo. Montreal's foremost celebrity sculptress – no joke – she takes pride in her ability to make a good living without being tied to any one man. When not entertaining, Caroline throws off robe and negligee so as to admire her naked self in a full-length mirror. The reader is twice told that she is the spitting image of Virginia Mayo.

The great Thomas P. Kelley, King of the Canadian Pulps, once bragged that he never revised a work in progress. I don't mean to suggest that Clark W. Dailey – of whom there is no trace – is Kelley, rather that the two men held similar views when it came to composition.

The fourth of this novel's eight chapters begins with something of a revelation. The celebrity sculptress is shown to be struggling financially. The post-war art boom has proved to be more of a sharp crack, and Caroline is forced to sell her work at bargain basement prices. Good guy Larry offers to pay her rent and bills, but Caroline hesitates. She fears the effect the loan – or is it a gift? – might have on their relationship. Ultimately, the sculptress accepts the lawyer's help.

Then something odd happens: Sans explication, the narrator (omniscient) reverses things, revealing that the lawyer has been paying for everything, Caroline's car included, for many months. A couple of chapters later, the reader learns that she has been passing on wads of Larry's dough to support Harvey. In today's parlance we might describe this as a reboot, with Caroline is reimagined as someone who never was a successful sculptor, despite her celebrity.

It's enough to make you want to throw the book against a wall. I didn't because it was already coming apart, and also because the many weird digressions contained entertained. Here, our omniscient narrator goes off on an awkwardly constructed tirade about the New Look:

How many women try to keep themselves slim, and when they look like a sheet of paper set up on end, with but the merest suggestion of what could be an attractive pair of rising beauties, when what curves they have are shrouded by grotesque "New Look"clothing, when they can walk down the street looking exactly like almost every other woman, that is, they wear a smug expression, because they think they are beautiful! Gawdallmighty! – how the fashion designers and their partners in misleading 'how to be smart' muck, the dress manufacturers, must smiles they purchase another yacht to set sail for Africa to get away from the horrible shapes they have been instrumental in creating, and to gaze in rapture and admiration upon woman as she was made to be – white, yellow or black! 

The book is peppered with rants, observations and other asides. The most repeated topic concerns "thought transference". Brace yourself, the narrator has some pretty harsh things to say:

Sadly, Soft to the Touch isn't worth reading for the plot; I'm not spoiling anything by describing the drama that ensues.

Harvey tries to kill his rival with some sort of poison he brought back from the war. Larry makes it to a hospital, where he lies drifting in and out of consciousness. During one lucid moment he asks Caroline to marry him. The sculptress agrees, but only because doctors have told her that he is sure to die. The bedside ceremony is performed, after which Larry loses consciousness for what looks to be the very last time. Caroline is left alone with her dying husband:

She was thinking. "How wonderfully he rallied after I held his hands for a long time. Perhaps..."
   She rose and, as before, took both his hands in her soft, warm ones. Then she drew all her inner forces and mental resources together and concentrated her thoughts on one short phrase, "I shall live." Perhaps if she could drive this straight from her brain into his, it would affect him.

Affect him it does! After a long night of handholding, Larry bounces back. The attending doctor, "wise, kind and clever, and a man very much interested in natural methods of healing," is pleasantly surprised. He sees nothing wrong with Larry wolfing down bacon, eggs and coffee with his new bride: "Hurrah!" exclaimed Larry, "our first breakfast together."

The last we see of Harvey, he's rushing off to the airport to catch a clipper to Bermuda. Larry is quickly discharged and returns to Caroline's Bishop Street apartment. The last pages of the novel are heavy with the promise of sex, but it ends before the act takes place. This reader didn't care; I'd long grown bored of Caroline and her groping admirers. I do miss the haranguing narrator, though, even if he can't be trusted.

Bloomer?:

Keeping one hand on the wheel, his other reached over and brushed her thigh, then touched the purse which lay in her lap.

Object and Access: An extremely fragile mass market paperback. At 159 pages – twelve of which are blank – Soft to the Touch may just be the shortest News Stand Library title. I'm guessing that the unknown cover artist had never seen a photo of Virginia Mayo. I'm certain he'd never seen a naked woman.

Soft to the Touch is nowhere to be found on Amicus or WorldCat. Only three copies are currently listed for sale online, ranging in price from $10 to $25. Condition is a factor. Get it while you can.

'Thanksgiving Morn'

From Canada First and Other Poems

James A. Ross

Toronto: McClelland & Stewart, 1920

Related posts:

A Thanksgiving Hymn
Thanksgiving Day Advice
An Expatriate Canadian Poet's New England Thanksgiving for Canadian Thanksgiving

'October in War Time'

Timely verse from the Great War by James A. Ross. First published in the 22 October 1918 edition of the Medicine Hat News, the above comes from the poet's Canada First and Other Poems (Toronto: McClelland & Stewart, 1920).

Talking Canadian Noir with Brian Kaufman

Hitting newsstands as I type: the Pulp Fiction issue of subTerrain. Number 68, it contains all sorts of goodness, including stories by Jesse Donaldson, Jenean McBrearty, Bruce McDougall, J.O. Bruday, Sam Wiebe, Lisa Pike, Chelsea Rooney and John Moore. Add to that poetry from Mark Parsons, John Creary, Carolye Kutcha and John Greenhause, along with an essay by Peter Babiak.

Editor Brian Kaufman interviews me about the Ricochet Books series. I let drop that we'll be publishing Martin Brett's Hot Freeze, "the greatest of all Canadian post-war noir."

Dig that cover by Ryan Heshka.

Related post:

Talking Montreal Noir with Nigel Beale

Montrose en français: une enquête de Russell Teed

"La surprise de l’automne", writes Le Devoir critic Michel Bélair. Indeed, it is. Tomorrow sees publication of Meurtre à Westmount, a translation of David Montrose's The Crime on Cote des Neiges, marking the first time the author's work has been available in French. Credit goes to translator Sophie Cardinal-Corriveau who discovered Montrose through the 2010 Ricochet Books reissue. She knows talent when she sees it, as does Éditions Hurtubise editor André Gagnon, who writes in his note de l'éditeur, "j'ai pensé qu'il serait si j'ose dire criminel de ne pas offrir au lectorat francophone québécois cette irrésistible radiographie de la vie montréalaise des années d'après-querre, une histoire aussi sombre sue grinçante, pimentée d'action et arrosée de quelques bonnes pintes de Dow."

Yvon Roy contributed the cover illustration to this very handsome edition. A translation of my Ricochet Preface also features.

M Bélair describes Montrose as a writer of talent, comparing him favourably to Dashiell Hammett and Raymond Chandler.

He'll get no argument from me.

Related posts:

This Just In…

Talking Montreal Noir with Nigel Beale

Of Montreal, Notes and Queries

The Double Flame Mystery

The first of five sent by Welland bookseller Steven Temple, this photo of James Benson Nablo's The Long November has had me pouring over old notes. Four years ago, my nose was to the ground in dogged pursuit of the figures behind its publisher, Double Flame of Hollywood, California. I enlisted help in the hunt from my man in L.A., Stephen J. Gertz. We got so far as to amass a list of suspects, but then I got hungry and was forced to return nose to grindstone.

Canadian writers should be ever mindful of the fate of John Richardson.

What's someone so focussed with things Canadian care about a Tinseltown publisher, anyway?

Good of you to ask.

Double Flame issued just three books – The Long November, Port of Call by Stephen Mark, and Serge C. Wolsey's Call House Madam – each of which had appeared six or seven years earlier as News Stand Library paperbacks. There's got to be a link between the two fly-by-night publishers, right?

The Long November is by far the best of the three titles, but it's Port of Call that holds my interest. It first appeared – more or less – as Overnight Escapade, one of the strangest books I've read this year. It's not a novel, but a very long short story packaged with some very short short stories and others of a conventional length. Port of Call and Other Selected Stories on the title page, the Double Flame edition not only renames the lead, but drops a couple of others.

It's easy to see why Double Flame was so attracted to the Nablo and Wolsey titles. First published by Dutton in 1946, The Long November enjoyed three hardcover printings and numerous mass market editions (and is back in print with a new Introduction by yours truly). Call House Madam, purportedly the story of the career of L.A. brothel keeper Beverly Davis, enjoyed even greater sales with all sorts of editions stretching from the very early 'forties to the very late 'sixties. "Over 400,000 copies sold at $3.95 " claims the 1963 Popular Library paperback.

But why Overnight Escapade? The book came and went in April 1950; unlike many of its titles, News Stand Library never even bothered issuing an American edition. The 1957 Double Flame repackaging is the second and last we've seen of Stephen Mark and his strange stories.

Looking over these photos has me itching to reopen the Double Flame file.

But now, it's time for lunch. Gotta eat, you know.

Note: My thanks to Steven Temple for the photographs. Those interested in purchasing the Nablo and Mark Double Flames are encouraged to contact the bookseller through his website.

Related posts:

The Mysterious Mister Nablo

The Long November in Late August

A Sailor's Story

Canadians Need Not Submit

Before anyone gets too excited, I should point out that this ad comes from the September 1924 issue of The Goblin. The Toronto Sunday World, like The Goblin itself, is no more. A shame because it sure paid well. Easy to see how the thing attracted such big name authors:

Well, they were big names back then. And G.K. Chesterton lives on, right?

Here's the thing: Canadian short story writers – "special" or otherwise –  had little place in the magazine. Rudyard Kipling, E. Phillips Oppenheim and Mary Robert Rinehart featured, but not Arthur Stringer, Frank L. Packard or Isabel Ecclestone Mackay. The sole Canadian I've found is Sir Gilbert Parker, and he hardly needed the money.

The Sunday World published its last issue in November 1924, just two months after that Goblin ad. Maybe they were paying too much for those stories.

The Bank of Canada informs that $3500 in 1924 is the equivalent of $48,883.33 today.

Terrible, Just Terrible

A Terrible Inheritance
Grant Allen
New York: Thomas Y. Crowell, [c. 1890]

A Terrible Inheritance is by far the worst Grant Allen I've read to date. That it's so short made it no easier task; in fact, much of what makes the book so very bad is caused by its brevity. Subplot and character development have no space. The twists and turns found in Allen's best are all but absent – there's precious little room to manoeuvre. Coincidence, ever-present in the man's work, is forced to even more absurd heights. I blame the Society for Promoting Christian Knowledge, which in 1887 commissioned and published A Terrible Inheritance as part of its Penny Library of Fiction.

from Queer Chums by Charles H. Eden
(London: Society for Promoting Christian Knowledge,  n.d.)

The Society was strict about its Penny Library of Fiction, ensuring that each volume numbered thirty-two double-columned pages. An old pro – he would've been thirty-eight at the time – Allen wrote to measure. Biographer Peter Morton tells us "Allen was able to manufacture featherweight novelettes like these in a few hours, surely without engaging his higher mental processes at all."

A Terrible Inheritance begins with the actions of an idiot, spoiling an otherwise very pleasant garden party at the English country home of Sir Arthur Woolryche. Here are the details: Some upper class twit, a would-be archer seeking to impress, strolls out onto the lawn, draws his bow, and hits the family dog.

The tragedy is made all the worse with the discovery that the arrow, one of Sir Arthur's Guyanese curios, has a poisoned tip.

But wait!

"Mr. Prior's here," somebody answered in haste from the group. "He knows more about poisons and poisoning than almost any other man in all England. He's made a special study of it, as I know. Mr. Prior! Mr. Prior! Come here, you're wanted."

Good luck soon comes to outweigh the bad. Prior is not only an expert in poisons, but is the leading authority on curari, the very one used on the arrow. What's more, just days earlier he had received from South America an elixir that may well prove to be an antidote.

What are the chances!

Prior saves the dog, thus proving the corrective effective. The College of Physicians' awards him its gold medal. Better still, Bertha, Sir Arthur's beautiful daughter, falls for his "manliness and sterling good quality". Father gives his blessing, despite being troubled by the young man's resemblance to… to… Sadly, Sir Arthur can't quite place the face.

Remember, this is the tale of a terrible inheritance, not a happy union. As the wedding day approaches Prior learns that he is the son of a Dr Walter Lichfield, also an expert in curari, who had died in disgrace whilst awaiting trial in the poisoning death of an uncle.

The Terrible Inheritance
Grant Allen
London: E. & J.B. Young, n.d.

Prior releases Bertha from their engagement the next morning. How could he not? By great coincidence, he and Sir Arthur had once speculated as to what had become of Lichfield's infant children. Said Prior:

"I don't know whether my profession makes me think to much of hereditary transmission, and all that sort of thing; but if I were born with a curse like that hanging over me, I'd give up my life entirely to some good for my fellow-men, and expose me least of all to any possible temptation. And I'd never marry."

Prior's only hope is that the man he now knows to have been his father was in fact innocent. Through his investigations, he comes to believe that Arthur Flamstead, Lichfield's close friend, was the actual murderer. Who is Arthur Flamstead? Why none other than Sir Arthur himself. "He assumed the name Woolrych instead, by royal warrant, on the death of a distant cousin on his mother's side, from whom he inherited a certain amount of property," explains Lady Woolrych.

Sir Arthur? A murderer? I didn't believe it for a second, in part because his daughter Bertha is such a sweet girl. A Terrible Inheritance plays upon Allen's pet theories regarding heredity, something he does to greater effect in What's Bred in the Bone, The Devil's Die and A Splendid Sin. This adds a certain of predictability – a drunkard's offspring will become drunkards, a gambler's offspring will become gamblers, and an expert in curari will spawn experts in curari. Those familiar with Allen will look about the small cast of characters for the true murderer, but find none. Sure enough, the true culprit is introduced in the final chapter.

Do I spoil things more by revealing it all ends with a wedding?

Trivia (for Canadians): Prior doesn't know he is the son of Lichfield because he was an infant at the time of his father's death. His mother soon set sail for Canada, where she and her children lived "under an assumed name in a remote village".

Trivia (for writers): A Terrible Inheritance was the first of three books Allen wrote for the Penny Library of Fiction; A Living Apparition (1889) and The Sole Trustee (1890) followed. Writers for the series earned between 30s and £10 per title – roughly £172 and £1150 today. I'm guessing that Allen's pay was at the upper end. Either way, it's not bad for an afternoon's work.

Object: A slim, 57-page hardcover, my copy, the first American edition, was purchased in August from a Yankee bookseller. The frontispiece, by an illustrator named Gallagher, has been simplified somewhat on the cover. Am I wrong in thinking it a novella? Is it a long short story? The word count is 16,226. You decide.

Access: A Terrible Inheritance enjoyed three editions and was later published in Danish (En underlig arv, 1891), Swedish (Mordet i Erith, 1917) and German (Ein schreckliches Erbteil, n.d.). The Kingston-Frontinac and Toronto public libraries have copies, as do the University of New Brunswick, University of Alberta and Simon Fraser University.

Last century, the Canadian Institute for Historical Microreproductions produced microforms of the Crowell and Young editions. Both can be read gratis at the Internet Archive. As might be expected, they have attracted a wake of print on demand vultures, who in turn excrete all kinds of mess. Miami's Book on Demand demands US$55.78 for theirs; just under a dollar a page.

Advert for Monkey Brand Soap featured in the E. & J.B. Young edtion

Related post:

No Nurture, Just Nature

A Nineteenth-Century What's Bred in the Bone

Victorian Psycho

Here's to Patti Abbott and Friday's Forgotten Books

It's been well over six years since Patti Abbott launched Friday's Forgotten Books, a weekly round-up of blog posts dealing with buried, obliterated and blown over titles from years past. A latecomer, I first contributed back in December 2011 with Touchable, a novel co-authored by the man who created Bizarro World.

Anyone interested in the obscure will find Friday's Forgotten Books a weekly treat. Last Friday's gathering included neglected gems like Dolores Hitchins' Sleep with Slander and The Deadly Climate by Ursula Curtiss.

Most of Patti's contributors are Americans, and much of the focus is on the American and British, but that doesn't mean there's nothing for the lover of Canadian literature.

It was through Friday's Forgotten Books that I first read Ron Scheer, whose Buddies in the Saddle has served as my introduction to Canada's early frontier fiction. What follows is just a sampling of the Canadian books he has covered through the years:

The Blue Wolf – William Lacey Amy
The Boss of Wind River – A.M. Chisolm
Desert Conquest – A.M. Chisolm
The Doctor – Ralph Connor
Woodsman of the West – M. A. Grainger

Out of Drowning Valley – Susan C. Jones
The Lost Cabin Mine – Frederick Niven
Northern Lights – Glbert Parker
The Backwoodsmen – Charles G.D. Roberts
Smith and Other Events – Paul St Pierre
Raw Gold –Bertrand W. Sinclair
Big Timber – Bertrand W. Sinclair
Wild West– Bertrand W. Sinclair
The Prairie Wife  – Arthur Stringer
The Settler – Herman Whitaker

Patti herself is a great champion of Margaret Millar, as am I, as is John Norris of Pretty Sinister Books. Though we've never met in person, I think John might agree with me that Martin Brett's Hot Freeze is the great Canadian noir novel. At the very least, he shares my opinion regarding Frank L. Packard's influence in crime fiction. I would be doing something of a disservice in not sharing this image from John's post on Canadian Fandom #17. It may well be the ugliest thing published in 1951, and here I'm including Taylor Caldwell's The Balance Wheel.

Returning to Patti, this week saw the announcement of her debut novel, Concrete Angel. Publisher Polis Books describes it as an "unflinching novel about love, lust and greed". Who can resist? Not me. I'll be picking up a copy.