The Essential John Glassco

John Glassco was a Canadian writer known for his reputation as a modern-day dandy as well as for his sophisticated poetry and prose. Born in 1909 to a wealthy family in Montreal, he attended McGill University where he became part of the Montreal Group of modernist writers. He later abandoned his studies to head to Paris, where he encountered many luminaries of the 1920s expatriate community, several of whom populated his popular fictionalized memoir, Memoirs of Montparnasse. Glassco returned to Canada in the 1930s, settling in Foster in Quebec's Eastern Townships. He went on to publish a wide variety of writings, from critical essays and book reviews to short stories and pornographic novels. His Selected Poems won the Governor General's Award for Poetry in 1971. Glassco died in 1981. Author photo cropped from `Saucer eye', Robert McAlmon, Buffy Glassco, Graeme Taylor, from Library and Archives Canada/John Glassco collection/e010767804.