
When Canadian Literature Moved to New York
Nick Mount(Author)
University of Toronto Press
Will be published approx. on 16. November 2006
Book
Paperback/Softback
210 pages
978-0-8020-9485-8 (ISBN)
Description
Canadian literature was born in New York City. It began not in the backwoods of Ontario or the salt flats of New Brunswick, but in the cafes, publishing offices, and boarding houses of late nineteenth-century New York, where writing developed as a profession and where the groundwork for the Canadian canon was laid. So argues Nick Mount in When Canadian Literature Moved to New York.
The last decades of the nineteenth century saw an extraordinary exodus from English Canada, draining the country of half its writers and all but a few of its contemporary and future literary celebrities. Motivated by powerful obstacles to a domestic literature, most of these migrants landed in New York - by the 1890s the centre of the continental literary market - and found for the first time a large, receptive literary market and recognition from non-Canadian publishers and reviewers.
While the expatriates of the 1880s and 1890s - including Bliss Carman, Ernest Thompson Seton, and Palmer Cox - were recognized for their achievements in Canada, the domestic literature they themselves spurred into existence rekindled a nationalist imperative to distinguish Canadian writing from other literatures, especially American, and this slowly eliminated most of their work from the emerging English Canadian canon. When Canadian Literature Moved to New York is the story of these expatriate writers: who they were, why they left, what they achieved, and how they changed Canadian literary history.
The last decades of the nineteenth century saw an extraordinary exodus from English Canada, draining the country of half its writers and all but a few of its contemporary and future literary celebrities. Motivated by powerful obstacles to a domestic literature, most of these migrants landed in New York - by the 1890s the centre of the continental literary market - and found for the first time a large, receptive literary market and recognition from non-Canadian publishers and reviewers.
While the expatriates of the 1880s and 1890s - including Bliss Carman, Ernest Thompson Seton, and Palmer Cox - were recognized for their achievements in Canada, the domestic literature they themselves spurred into existence rekindled a nationalist imperative to distinguish Canadian writing from other literatures, especially American, and this slowly eliminated most of their work from the emerging English Canadian canon. When Canadian Literature Moved to New York is the story of these expatriate writers: who they were, why they left, what they achieved, and how they changed Canadian literary history.
Reviews / Votes
"'A highly readable history...the appeal of Mount's narrative is its examination of Canadian writers who have since dropped out of literary history but who made a huge splash in the 1880s and 1890s.' Philip Marchand, Toronto Star 'The provocative title of Nick Mount's book draws attention to a historical phenomenon that students of early Canadian literature have recognized but have failed to explore to any depth: the fact that Canada and Canadians in the late nineteenth century wanted a distinctive Canadian literature but were not prepared to pay for it. [Mount is] an ideal guide to this little-known material.' W.J. Keith, Books in Canada"More details
Series
Language
English
Place of publication
Toronto
Canada
Target group
Professional and scholarly
Product notice
Paperback (trade)
Dimensions
Height: 232 mm
Width: 154 mm
Thickness: 17 mm
Weight
358 gr
ISBN-13
978-0-8020-9485-8 (9780802094858)
Copyright in bibliographic data and cover images is held by Nielsen Book Services Limited or by the publishers or by their respective licensors: all rights reserved.
Schweitzer Classification
Person
Nick Mount is an assistant professor in the Department of English at the University of Toronto.
Content
Introduction
1 Lamentations
In the Camp of the Philistines
The Continental 'We'
Modern Alexandria
2 Agents of Modernism
Supplementary Adam
Will Roberts and the Literary Digest
Laughing It Off
Palmer Cox, the Brownie Man
3 Living the Significant Life
The Apostle of the Vagabonds
Saint Craven of Harlem
The Ascent and Fall of Stinson Jarvis
Thinking New Thoughts
The Making of Almon Hensley
4 The New Romantics
Wolf Thompson, Wilderness Prophet
Now for the Killing: Edwyn Sandys
'Three Musketeers of the Pen'
A Solomon of Little Syria
The Bewitchment of Charles G.D. Roberts
5 Exodus Lost
Notes
Selected Bibliography
Acknowledgments
Illustration Credits
Index
1 Lamentations
In the Camp of the Philistines
The Continental 'We'
Modern Alexandria
2 Agents of Modernism
Supplementary Adam
Will Roberts and the Literary Digest
Laughing It Off
Palmer Cox, the Brownie Man
3 Living the Significant Life
The Apostle of the Vagabonds
Saint Craven of Harlem
The Ascent and Fall of Stinson Jarvis
Thinking New Thoughts
The Making of Almon Hensley
4 The New Romantics
Wolf Thompson, Wilderness Prophet
Now for the Killing: Edwyn Sandys
'Three Musketeers of the Pen'
A Solomon of Little Syria
The Bewitchment of Charles G.D. Roberts
5 Exodus Lost
Notes
Selected Bibliography
Acknowledgments
Illustration Credits
Index