02 January 2025

The Nine Best Canadian Novels of the 1920s


In my twenties, the 'twenties – by which I mean the 1920s – seemed the height of art, film, decadence, glamour, and romance.

I'm not sure I was wrong.

The decade also saw the the height of the novel, though perhaps not in Canada. My CanLit profs assigned works by Mazo de la Roche, Frederick Philip Grove and Martha Ostenso. How they paled beside Faulkner, Fitzgerald, Forster, Hemingway, Joyce, Wharton, and Woolf! But then, what might one expect from a country of a mere nine million?

Time has passed, during which I've come to recognize that the keepers of the canon have messed up in so very many ways. 

As we're now half-way through the 2020s, I present this list of the nine best Canadian novels of the 1920s. Not one of the authors received so much as a passing mention in my CanLit courses.

By no means definitive, I've limited the list to nine titles because I've yet to read Douglas Durkin's The Magpie (1923) and They Have Bodies (1929) by Barney Allen (Sol Allen). From what I know of the two, it's likely that at least one would round out a top ten. I'll be making a point of reading both this year and will keep you informed. But for now:

The Thread of Flame
Basil King
New York: Harper, 1920

In the aughts and tens of the last century, King topped American bestseller lists with The Inner Shrine, The Wild Olive, and The Street Called Straight, though his two best books date from the twenties. This one involves a man who lost his memory whilst fighting in the Great War, but don't let that put you off.

The Empty Sack
Basil King
New York: Harper, 1921

The best King novel of the nine I've read, this involves the Folletts, transplanted Nova Scotians living comfortably in New York City until the aging patriarch is let go by his employer. The drama that unfolds has less to do with the economic devastation than it does the struggles in adapting to a post-Great War world.
The Wine of Life
Arthur Stringer
New York: Knopf, 1921

In his time, Stringer was dismissed as a writer with an eye on the market. This work, an outlier, was inspired by his ill-fated marriage to statuesque Gibson Girl Jobyna Howland. It's Stringer's most literary novel as evidenced by the fact that it was rejected by his usual publisher Bobbs-Merrill only to be picked up by Alfred Knopf. 

The Hidden Places
Bertand W. Sinclair
Toronto: Ryerson, 1922

A novel about a veteran of the Great War written by a man who never served, The Hidden Places can seem absurd at times, and relies too much on coincidence, but it is interesting for its damning indictment of the treatment of men who returned from the conflict scared and disfigured.
Pagan Love
John Murray Gibbon
Toronto: McClelland &
   Stewart, 1922

The most cutting Canadian novel of the decade, it has three targets: the self-help industry, corporate culture, and gender norms. Criticisms of the first two bring insight, but that of the last makes Pagan Love one of the most intriguing Canadian novels of the twentieth century. 

"Cattle"
Winnifred Eaton
New York: Watt, 1924

A late career novel written by a Montrealer of Chinese and English parents who'd achieved fame by passing herself off as a Japanese princess. Eaton's final years were spent on an Alberta ranch belonging to her husband, inspiring this violent, disturbing novel set in cattle country.

The Land of Afternoon
Gilbert Knox [Madge
   Macbeth]
Ottawa: Graphic, 1924

Scandalous in its day, something of a head-scratcher in ours, The Land of Afternoon provides further evidence that romans à clef tend to age poorly. There are biting satirical sketches, but who are the models? Even then, I expect few outside Ottawa had a clue. 
Blencarrow
Isabel MacKay
Toronto: Allen, 1926

The last novel from a writer who never shied away from unpleasant topics: drug addiction, child abduction, worker exploitation, racism, mental illness. Domestic abuse and its effect on a wife and daughters permeate this one, yet it is not a message novel.  


All Else Is Folly: A Tale of
   War and Passion
Peregrine Acland
Toronto: McClelland &
   Stewart, 1929

The great Canadian novel of the Great War. Written by one who was there, it is highly autobiographical and would've been banned had the author's father not been so well connected. Praised by Ford Maddox Ford and Frank Harris.

A century later, two are in print. They were not when I first read them. In fact, all nine had been out of print since the early 'thirties. Ten years ago, I played a part in reviving All Else is Folly as part of Dundurn's Voyageur Classics series.


Winnifred Eaton's "Cattle" was reissued in 2023 by Invisible Publishing. It was reviewed at the Dusty Bookcase here back in 2014.


If given the opportunity to bring another back, I'd chose John Murray Gibbon's Pagan Love. It is the most remarkable, unconventional, and challenging Canadian novel of the decade.

Or is that They Have Bodies?

I aim to find out.

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01 January 2025

'Premier janvier' by Jean Bruchési



New Year's verse by Jean Bruchési from Coups d'ailes (Montreal: Bibliothèque de l'Action française, 1922)
PREMIER JANVIER

Comme un vase dont le cristal s'est émietté
Sous la main qui venait y déposer des roses,
Un an est disparu, brutalement jeté
Au gouffre où vont mourir toutes les vieilles choses.

Il n'est plus, sauf peut-être où vit le souvenir.
Il n'est plus. Oh! pourquoi faut-il donc que tout meure?
Pourquoi sur le passé reposer l'avenir?
Pourquoi vivre et lutter, puisque rien ne demeure?

Pourquoi? C'est que la vie émerge de la mort!
C'est que par le passé doit s'écrire l'histoire,
Et c'est que la richesse est faite de l'effort
Journalier, sans lequel il n'est pas de victoire!

C'est qu'il n'est point d'amour qu'il ne soit de douleur,
Qu'un plus doux parfum vient de la rose fanée,
Que l'âme se retrempe aux sources du malheur,
Et c'est qu'à Tan détruit succède une autre année!

Bonne Année! Happy New Year! 

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26 December 2024

The Very Best Reads of 2024: Hilliard's Hat-Trick


With five days left in 2024, there's little chance I'll read and review another neglected book before the calendar turns... and so, the summary!

This was an unusual year for the Dusty Bookcase in that nearly half the books covered – twelve of the twenty-five – were published over a century ago. I don't know that I've reached half that number in the past. This years titles span 173 years, from Major John Richardson's Hardscrabble; Or, The Fall of Chicago (1850) to Richardson biographer David Richard Beasley's Canadian Authors You Should Know (2023). The former is the earliest paperback in my collection; Mark Breslin's Son of a Meech: The Best Brian Mulroney Jokes (1991), also read this year, is the ugliest in both appearance and content.


The best-looking book I've read in the past twelve months is the 1875 Lee & Sheppard edition of The Lily and the Cross by James De Mille. Coincidentally, De Mille's A Strange Manuscript Found in a Copper Cylinder was the most beautiful read last year.

To tweak the early Chapters slogan, great looks are just the beginning. The Dusty Bookcase has always been more about content than appearance. I write this, despite the near certainty that the jackets for this year's list of the three books most deserving of reissue were illustrated by the author herself:

The Jameson Girls
Jan Hilliard
   [Hilda Kay Grant]
Toronto: Nelson, Foster &
   Scott, 1956

The first of the Nova Scotian's books to be set in Ontario, this one concerns four women brought together by the imminent death of their father, once a successful rumrunner. It's about them, not him. 

Miranda
Jan Hilliard
   [Hilda Kay Grant]
New York: Abelard-Schulman,
   1960

This was the very best novel I read this year. The titular character is the focal point, though her story is told through her daughter Rose. An servant in London, in Canada Miranda tweaks her past and takes on airs, while Rose grows to see through it all.

Morgan's Castle
Jan Hilliard
   [Hilda Kay Grant]
New York: Abelard-Schulman,
   1964

Her fifth in ten years, this is the author's final novel. Though Hillard lived a further three decades, she wrote only three more books; all were non-fiction, all were published in the 'sixties.



Sadly, of all the books covered, only one is in print today:


Yellow-Wolf & Other Tales of the Saint Lawrence, Jane Brierley's Governor General's Award-winning 1990 translation of Philippe-Joseph Aubert de Gaspé's posthumous Divers (1893). Copies can be purchased directly from publisher Véhicule Press through this link.


I was tempted to include The Missing Chums (1928), the fourth Hardy Boys book penned by Ontario boy Leslie McFarlane, but that would've been cheating. The edition being flogged today was rewritten in 1962 by James Buechler. As I understand, all that's left of the original is the title. 

This year, I was involved in the publication of only one book, the Ricochet rerelease of Sugar-Puss on Dorchester Street with new cover and revised introduction by Will Straw.


Next year will see a Ricochet reissue of a 1952 Canadian pulp novel that was deemed to spicy for the American market.

I'll say no more.

As for New Year's resolutions, I have but one. I resolve to read more humour. Given the racket from south of the border, I have a feeling I'll be in need of a good laugh every now and then. 

As always, keep kicking against the pricks! Do Johnny Cash and John Metcalf proud.

Bonne année!

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25 December 2024

'Cloches de Noël' by Jean Bruchési



For the day, a poem by historian and diplomat Jean Bruchési from Coups d'ailes (Montreal: Bibliothèque de l'Action française, 1922), his only volume of verse.
CLOCHES DE NOËL

      Cloches qui, dans la nuit, sonnez éperdument,
      Carillons qui volez au-dessus des prairies,
      Mêlez aux flocons blancs vos claires sonneries
      Cloches qui, dans la nuit, sonnez éperdument.

      Laissez tomber sur nous un peu de votre joie,
      Emportez jusqu'aux cieux les désirs de nos coeurs;
      Sans jamais mettre fin à vos accents vainqueurs,
      Laissez tomber sur nous un peu de votre joie.

      Chantez pour le vieillard et riez pour l'enfant,
      A l'un donnez la force, à l'autre l'espérance;
      Loin du pauvre qui pleure écartez la souffrance,
      Chantez pour le vieillard et riez pour l'enfant.

      Du Roi de Bethléhem, alertes messagères,
      Vous annoncez partout la venue ici-bas.
      En passant, répandez des roses sur Ses pas,
      Du Roi de Bethléhem, alertes messagères.

      O carillons d'airain, chantez: nous écoutons.
      De cet Enfant qui nait, célébrez les louanges,
      Et mêlez vos accords aux douces voix des anges;
      O carillons d'airain, chantez: nous écoutons.

      Elevez-vous là-haut, près des pâles étoiles,
      Effleurez-les sans bruit de vos sons argentés,
      Et revenez vers nous, pleines de leurs beautés...
      Elevez-vous là-haut, près des pâles étoiles.

      Chantez-nous la splendeur de cette grande nuit:
      Parcourez sans arrêt les pays de la terre;
      Redites à chacun le sublime mystère;
      Chantez-nous la splendeur de cette grande nuit.

      Sonnez, sonnez toujours, cloches de nos églises;
      En nos coeurs déposez tous vos accents joyeux,
      Et, demeurant pour nous la voix qui vient des cieux,
      Sonnez, sonnez toujours, cloches de nos églises.
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16 December 2024

Elinor Glyn's Christmas Ghost Story (and others)



The Contrast and Other Stories
Elinor Glyn
London: Duckworth, 1913
312 pages

As is typical of short story collections, this book is overshadowed by the author's longer works. The Contrast and Other Stories was published in the very same year as Glyn's novels The Sequence and The Point of View. Of these, the former, a story of the romance between "tall, stern and cynical" Sir Hugh Dremont and "pale, sensitive and spiritual" Guinevere, is the more notable for having earned a spot sixty-five years later as volume 17 in Barbara Cartland's Library of Love.


Those character descriptions of Sir Hugh Dremont and Guinevere come from Dame Barbara herself. I must read it, if only to learn Guinevere's surname.


The Point of View failed to reach quite that height, but it has an equally interesting publishing history. The novel was first published from start to finish in the February 1913 number of Ainslee's Magazine. Later that same year, it appeared as a book in the United States, though not in the United Kingdom. My first American edition was purchased three years ago for fifty cents .

New York: Appleton, 1913
The Point of View is one of five "stories" in The Contrast and Other Stories. Spanning 184 of the collection's 312 pages, it cannot help but dominate.

Frontispiece to the Appleton edition.
The heroine of the novel – again, it is a novel – is  21-year-old Stella Rawson, a pretty brown-eyed orphan who was raised by her uncle and aunt, Canon and the Honourable Mrs Ebly. The spring of 1913 finds the three visiting Rome. While dining at the restaurant of the Grand Hotel they notice Count Roumovsky. He's hard to miss. The count dresses in such fine clothes and wears such a slim wristwatch that the Canon and the Honourable Mrs. Ebly take offense. And then there's his hair:
It seemed incredible that such an almost grotesque arrangement of coiffure should adorn the head of a man in modern evening dress. It should have been on some Byzantine saint. However, there he was, and entirely unconcerned at the effect he was producing.
By all appearances, Roumovsky is oblivious to the Eblys' attentions, Stella's included, but when alone with her the following morning he makes his move in arranging an afternoon tryst, which is followed by another, and an evening encounter in which he proposes marriage. Stella is hot for the Russian dandy, but is already betrothed to Reverend Eustace Medlicott, a High Church Anglican who is prepared to leave his life of celibacy. 

It pains me to write that 'The Point of View' is the best "story" in the collection, because I really wanted to focus on 'The Irtonwood Ghost;' Canadian Christmas ghost stories being so uncommon.

Can 'The Irtonwood Ghost' be considered in any way Canadian? I say yes. Elinor Glyn came to Canada at two months of age and left as a nine-year-old. Those are formative years, right?


First published in the 1911 Christmas Issue of Pearson's, 'The Irtonwood Ghost' is the second longest piece in The Contrast and Other Stories. It's on par with the four others in that it is neither more nor less memorable. I read it two weekends back and can't quite recall what it was all about. From what I do remember, it concerns graceful young widow Esther Charters who has been invited to spend Christmas at Irtonwood Manor, located somewhere in the English countryside. Its a good break from her worries, which centre on a century-old marriage certificate that needs be found to secure the property she has inherited from her late husband. Unbeknownst to her, there is an enemy, Ambrose Duval, amongst the other guests. Duval has been on the hunt for the very same certificate, but only so that he might destroy it. The supernatural comes into play in the form of haunting dreams in which premonition plays a part. Oh, and there is a ghost.


'The Contrast' is an odd choice for the title tale in that it is the weakest of the five stories. Irish songbird Pauline is being strung along by a ne'er-do-well while a devoted man, the better in every way, pines from the wings.

In 'Her Advice,' a young wife chooses to confront an older femme fatale whom she believes is threatening her marriage, and instead comes away with advice on how to tend the flames of desire.

The closer, 'Fragments,' concerns an unnamed woman married to Ernest, a man made invalid by war. It is either Glyn at her most experimental or nothing more than notes being passed off as a short story.


I think 'Fragments' is the only one of the five to have a sad ending, though I may be wrong. In the course of its twenty pages, the wife falls in love with able-bodied landowner and dog breeder Sir John Harrington, and he with her. Neither act on that love out of deference to Ernest. The story ends with the wife arriving home one day to find her husband dead. Could it too be a happy ending? After all, Ernest is no longer suffering, and his wife is now free to be with Sir John.

That the ending is so very predictable reflects on Glyn's chief flaw as a storyteller. Once set in motion, her plots follow the simplest course toward a happy conclusion. There is conflict to be sure, as expected with matters of the heart, but there are no obstacles of any significance.

Each story ends with every character happy or at the very least satisfied, the exception being Ambrose Duval of 'The Irtonwood Ghost.' Esther Charters ends up with the lost marriage certificate, not him. On the other hand, Duval is allowed to escape, which must have made him happy.

Even Eustace Medlicott of The Point of View is happy, despite losing his charming fiancée to a Russian count. Bonus: Reverend Medlicott is free to maintain his life of celibacy.

The Point of View ends with the marriage of Stella and Count Roumovsky, but would they live happily ever after? After all, their whirlwind romance takes place in the spring of 1913, a mere fourteen months before the assassination of Franz Ferdinand. I wonder how they fared once the Bolsheviks took power.

Soon to become ghosts themselves, perhaps.

Object: Once part of the Hammersmith Public Libraries, it isn't nearly so scarred as one might expect.


At some point it belonged to someone named O. Farnworth.


I purchased this copy, a first edition, earlier this year from an Edinburgh bookseller. Price: £15.

Access: A Quebec bookseller is offering a "Very Good" copy of the Duckworth edition for US$30.00, while another in New York State has listed the same in perhaps lesser condition at US$65.00. Both have blue boards, which I can only assume is a variant.

The only other edition of which I am aware is the Tauchnitz, published in Leipzig in 1913. Just one copy is listed for sale online; this by an Ottawa bookseller:
Half Bound. Condition: VG. 271 pages in very good, clean condition; edges a little yellowed. Marbled endpapers. Half bound with brown leather over marbled boards. Gilt titles and decoration on the spine. Light scuffing on the leather and boards. Edges rubbed. Corners not bumped. VG Size: 4 1/2 x 6 1/2.
Sounds intriguing. 

The Duckworth edition can. be read online here thanks to the Internet Archive.

The Point of View was published in 1913 by Applewood and Authors' Press, then never again. As I write, two online booksellers are offering jacketless copies of the latter online at US$4.50 and US$5.00, but at US$10.00, the copy to buy is this Appleton first:


Sure, that's more than 50¢, but it has a dust jacket. And doesn't it sound spicy?

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09 December 2024

The Ten Best Book Buys of 2024... and many gifts!


What a year! On day two, while returning from a grocery run in nearby Brockville, I stopped at a thrift store and found first editions of Gilbert Parker's The Judgement House and Pardon My Parka by Joan Walker. They set me back all of four dollars.

The Judgement House had been on my radar only two months, but I'd been looking for Pardon My Parka well before my 2022 tear through Walker's East of Temple Bar, Murder By Accident, Repent at Leisure, and the condensed Repent at Leisure. It completes my collection of her works. 

I arrived home from Brockville to find this gift from my friend James Calhoun my mailbox:


More on that below.

The strangest book buying experience occurred during a May visit from our daughter. She'd just moved to her first flat and was looking for inexpensive pots and pans, so the family set out for a favourite thrift store in Smiths Falls. During the drive I began talking about Jan Hilliard whose novel Miranda I'd set down to make the trip. I went on about her background, her rascal of a father, her art school education, what a good writer she was, and how unfair it is that she's so forgotten. When we got to the store, mother and daughter went off hunting kitchenware. I made for the books, where I found – within seconds – a first edition of Hilliard's The Salt-Box. I'd never before seen any of her books in a store. The copy doesn't have a dust jacket and is a library discard, but at 66 cents I shan't complain. It completes my collection of her works. 

That Judgement House, Pardon My Parka, and The Salt-Box didn't make this year's list gives some idea as to how good 2024 was in terms of book purchases.

This years top ten were bought from booksellers in Canada, Austria, England, Scotland, and the United States:

A Fair Affair
Paul Champagne
Winnipeg: Greywood, 1967

"A chilling mystery with a James Bond-Simon Templar flavour, and devilish spoof on Canadian politicians," says the cover copy.

We'll see.

Set around Expo '67, this was purchased after reading the disappointing So Long at the Fair.

The Woman Who Didn't
Victoria Cross
   [Annie Sophie Currie]
London: Lane, 1909

An 1895 novel written in response to Grant Allen's scandalous The Woman Who Did. I like Allen's novel, but understand that Victoria Cross was highly critical. 

I'm ready to hear her out.

Harsh Evidence
Pamela Fry
London: Wingate, 1953

Reviewed here in July, Fry's debut did not disappoint; I'd read The Watching Cat (1960), her second and last novel, so expectations were low.

This one is a murder mystery set amongst well-paid people working in Toronto's lucrative magazine industry. Different times. I grew jealous.

The Conquering Hero
John Murray Gibbon
New York: Grosset & Dunlap, [c. 1921]

Judging a book by its cover, I'm not sure this is for me. Still, Gibbon wrote Pagan Love (1922), which is easily the most unconventional and challenging Canadian novel of last century's 'twenties.

When I found this Gibbon book – signed – I leapt.

Three Weeks
Elinor Glyn
New York: Macaulay,
   [c. 1924]

A novel that would've appealed as a very young man. Don't know why I didn't buy it then, but I have it now... and in a photoplay edition!

It says everything about my reaction that I bought two other Glyns after reading it.

A View of the Town
Jan Hilliard
Toronto: Nelson, Foster &
   Scott, 1954

It's difficult to pace oneself with Jan Hilliard; she wrote only five novels. I'm saving A View of the Town, the only one I've not read, for next year. Seventy-year-old reviews suggest it is her funniest. By now, I feel I know Hilliard; much of that humour will be black.

Miranda
Jan Hilliard
New York: Abelard-
   Schuman, 1960

My favourite read of 2024!

Given that I read two other Hilliard novels this year it was not an easy choice.



Morgan's Castle
Jan Hilliard
New York: Abelard-
   Schulman, 1964

The author's biggest selling novel – there was a Dell paperback edition – and I can see why. Where previous novels could get very dark indeed, Morgan's Castle is the only in which murder figures.

And more than one! 


Chipmunk
Len Peterson
Toronto: McClelland &
   Stewart, 1949

I once read a very enthusiastic review of this novel, but where?

I have no idea who wrote it or what was said, but it was so positive that I've kept an eye out ever since.


In the Village of Viger
Duncan Campbell Scott
Toronto: Ryerson, 1945

A controversial choice, perhaps, given the author, this is a more attractive edition than the very rare 1896 American first. The Ryerson edition didn't do a whole lot better, but this hasn't prevented certain critics from holding the collection aloft as highly influential. John Metcalf has proven otherwise.


This year saw a good many gifts to the Dusty Bookcase, beginning with the book that arrived on the second day in January:

The Winter of Time
Raymond Holmes
   [Raymond Souster]
Toronto: News Stand
   Library, 1949

Raymond Souster's third book and first novel, the poet drew something from his wartime experience in the writing, but it is no way autobiographical.

Thank God.

A gift from James Calhoun.

Late Spring
Peter Donovan
Toronto: Macmillan, 1930

A novel set in the Toronto art world by a Montrealer better known as "P O'D." Robertson Davies was an admirer, describing Donovan as "knowingly and intentionally and pointedly funny."

Another gift from James Calhoun, this is sure to be read in 2025.

Michelle Remembers
Michelle Smith and
   Lawrence Pazder
New York: Pocket, 1981

After I'd expressed frustration in being unable to find an affordable copy copy of this Satanic Panic classic, Brad Middleton of My Bloody Obsession sent two copies my way. This one is a first printing of the July 1981 first Pocket books edition.

The Gorilla's Daughter
Thomas P. Kelley
Toronto: News Stand
   Library, 1950

A book I will likely never own, but a book I've now read thanks to bowdler of Fly-by-Night who kindly sent scans and photocopies my way.

A tragic love story.



Finally, I received two large boxes of books from the West Coast sent by my friend Karyn Huenemann containing books by L. Adams Beck, Frances Brooke, Ralph Connor, Muriel Denison, Norman Duncan, Sara Jeanette Duncan, Muriel Elwood, F.T. Flahiff, Grey Owl, Nellie McClung, Frederick Niven, Frank L. Packard, George L. Parker, Gilbert Parker, Charles G.D. Roberts, and Duncan Campbell Scott.

Again, what a year! 

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