CANADIAN LITERATURE (IN ENGLISH). Perhaps the most notable examples of Canadian literature in English are to be found in the field of history, where the outstanding achievement is Canada and its Provinces (1913 seq.), a history of the country in 23 volumes, edited by Sir Arthur G. Doughty and Dr. Adam Shortt, and counting among its contribu tors most of the recognized authorities on Canadian history, biography and economics. Another notable essay in Canadian history is the series known as the Chronicles of Canada (1920 seq.) in 32 volumes, edited by G. M. Wrong and H. H. Langton, each volume by a competent Canadian writer.
Of individual works, William Kingsford's (1819-98) History of Canada (1887-98), in io volumes, is still the most ambitious, carrying the story of the country from its earliest beginnings down to the Union of 1841. In the main it is accurate, but the style is heavy and unattractive. J. C. Dent's (1841-88) Last Forty Years (188o) is practically a continuation of Kingsford. Dent also wrote an interesting but one-sided account of the Re bellion of 1837-38. A useful but somewhat perfunctory general history is F. B. Tracy's Tercentenary History of Canada (1908). This comes down to the first decade of the 2oth century. Robert Christie's (1788-1856) History of Lower Canada (1848-55), was the first serious attempt to deal with the period of British rule, and is still useful. Histories of the Maritime Provinces have been written by Thomas Chandler Haliburton (1796-1865), Beamish Murdoch (I800?-I876), and James Hannay (1842-1910). Hali burton's is much the best of the three, but none covers the later history of these provinces. The brief but stirring history of western Canada has been told by Alexander Begg (184o-98) and his namesake (1825-1904), by George Bryce (1844-1931), and in such studies as Agnes Laut's (1871-1936) Conquest of the Great Northwest (1908) and L. J. Burpee's (b. 1873) Search for the Western Sea (1908). F. 0. S. Scholefield's (1875-1919) and F. W. Howay's British Columbia deals comprehensively with the history of that province. Brief and popular histories of Canada have been written by J. M. McMullen (182o-1907), Sir Charles G. D. Roberts (b. 186o), Sir John Bourinot (1837-1902), W. L. , Grant (1872-1935), and George Bryce. But perhaps Canadian scholarship and research are shown at their best in such special "works as Sir Arthur G. Doughty's (186o-I936) Siege of Quebec (1901-2), William Wood's (b. 1864) Fight for Canada (1905), Sir C. P. Lucas' (1853-1931), Canadian War of 1812 (1906) and History of Canada 1763-1812 (19o9), and D. C. Harvey's French Regime in Prince Edward Island. Sir Robert Borden's
Canada and the Commonwealth (1928) and Mac kenzie King's (1874- ) Message of the Carillon (1927) prove
that Canadian statesmen sometimes put their thoughts into print. Standard works in their several fields are Alpheus Todd's (1821-84) Parliamentary Government in the British Colonies (188o), Sir John Bourinot's Parliamentary Procedure and Practice (1884) , W. P. M. Kennedy's Constitution of Canada (1922), and the series of Canadian Constitutional Documents (1914-18) edited by Doughty, Shortt and McArthur.
Canadian biography has been devoted mainly to political sub jects. The most important work in this field is The Makers of Canada, published in a new and revised edition in 1926, in 12 volumes, including an Encyclopaedia of Canadian History. Each of the 31 biographies is by a competent Canadian writer, and the series is edited by W. L. Grant. An indispensable work is W. S. Wallace's Dictionary of Canadian Biography (1926). Other im portant biographies are Sir Joseph Pope's (1854-1926) Sir John Macdonald (1894), 0. D. Skelton's (b. 1878) Sir Alexander Galt (1920) and Sir Wilfrid Laurier (1921), E. M. Saunders' (1829 1916) Sir Charles Tupper (1916), Isabel Skelton's (b. 1879) Thomas D'Arcy McGee (1925), C. R. W. Biggar's Sir Oliver Mowat
Beckles Willson's Lord Strathcona (1915), L. J. Burpee's Sir Sandford Fleming (1915), Sir John Willison's (1856 1927) Reminiscences (1919), John Boyd's Sir Georges Etienne Cartier
Harvey Cushing's Sir William Osler (1925), Sir Richard Cartwright's (1835-1912) Reminiscences 0912), Arnold Haultain's Goldwin Smith (1913), and James Mayor's
1925) My Windows on the Street of the World (1924).
In the literature of such a country as Canada books of explora tion and travel fill relatively a much larger place than in the litera ture of older countries. The original narratives of such discoverers as Jacques Cartier, Champlain, La Salle, Radisson, La Verendrye, in the French period; of Mackenzie, Thompson, Fraser, Cook and Vancouver in the west ; and of Hudson, Foxe, James, Franklin, Hearne, Back, and many others, in the far north, are to-day very rare in their early printed form, or have remained until recently in manuscript. Thanks largely to such agencies as the Champlain Society, many of these journals have been in recent years either printed for the first time or reprinted, with scholarly notes and introductions. It is appropriate to note here the important con tributions made to Canadian history, literature and science, through such agencies as the Public Archives, the National Museum, the Royal Society of Canada, and the Canadian reviews.
In literary essays very little has as yet been accomplished, unless we may count Goldwin Smith (q.v.) as in some sense a Canadian. As a scholar, a thinker, and a master of pure English he exerted a marked influence upon Canadian literature and life, though some of his political views made very little appeal to Canadian sentiment. Some of the books of Stephen Leacock (b. 1869), Archibald MacMechan
Peter McArthur (1866-1924), and W. H. Blake (1861-1924) deserve to be men tioned here.
Imaginative literature has not yet reached very high levels. Mediocrity is the prevailing characteristic of much that passes for poetry in Canada, though a few writers have produced meritorious work. The conditions of Canadian life, as already suggested, have not been altogether favourable to the birth of great poets, but within the limits of their song such men as Archibald Lampman (1861-91), William Wilfred Campbell (1861-1918), Sir Charles G. D. Roberts, Bliss Carman (1861-1929), Duncan Campbell Scott (b. 1862), George Frederick Cameron (1854-85) and Frederick George Scott (b. 1861) have written verses that are well worth remembering. Lampman's poetry is perhaps the most finished and musical. Campbell's poetry, in spite of a certain lack of compression, is full of dramatic vigour; Roberts has put some of his best work into sonnets and short lyrics, while Carman has been very successful with the ballad; the simplicity and sever ity of Cameron's style won the commendation of even so exact ing a critic as Matthew Arnold. Charles Mair (184o-1927) was a survival from the pioneer period. His long narrative poem Tecumseh (1886) is on the whole a fine piece of work. One remarkable drama, Saul (1857), by Charles Heavysege (1816– 1876), belongs to Canadian literature. Though unequal in execu tion, it contains passages of exceptional beauty and power. The sweetness and maturity of the verses of Isabella Valency Craw ford (1851-87) are also worthy of remembrance. The habitant poems of W. H. Drummond (1854-1907) stand in a class by themselves, between English and French Canadian literature, presenting the simple life of the farmer of Quebec with sympathy, humour, and picturesqueness. Marjorie Pickthall (1883-1922) produced three little volumes containing verse of unusual charm. John McCrae (1872-19,18) will be remembered because of his one heart-stirring poem "In Flanders Fields." Of the more recent writers Wilson Macdonald stands easily first. His Out of the lI'ilderness (1926), marks him as a poet who may be expected to do even more notable work in the future. Other new Canadian poets whose work rises above mediocrity are Norah Holland, Beatrice Taylor, E. J. Pratt, and Louise Morey Bowman. Col lected editions are now available of the works of Lampman, Roberts, Carman, Campbell, Mair, D. C. Scott, F. G. Scott, Drummond and Pickthall. Selections from the poems of these and other Canadian writers are found in the following anthologies: —W. D. Lighthall's Songs of the Great Dominion (1889), Wilfred Campbell's Oxford Book of Canadian Verse, John W. Garvin's Canadian Poets (1925), Theodore Rand's Treasury of Canadian Verse (1900), L. J. Burpee's Flowers from a Canadian Garden (1909) and Century of Canadian Sonnets (1910). Two books that may be noted here are C. M. Barbeau's Folk Songs of French Canada (1925) and J. M. Gibbon's Canadian Folk Songs (1927).
The first distinctively Canadian novel was John Richardson's (1796-1852) Wacousta (1832), a stirring and read able tale of the war of 1812. Richardson afterwards wrote half a dozen other romances, dealing chiefly with incidents in Canadian history. Susanna Moodie (1803-85) and Katharine Parr Traill (1802-99), sisters of Agnes Strickland, contributed novels and tales to one of the earliest and best of Canadian magazines, the Literary Garland (1838-47). The Golden Dog, William Kirby's (1817-1906) fascinating romance of old Quebec, first appeared in 1877 in a pirated edition. Twenty years later the first author ized edition was published, and it has often been reprinted. James de Mille (1833-80) was the author of some 3o novels, the best of which is Helena's Household (1868), a story of Rome in the 1st century. The Dodge Club (1869), a humorous book of imagi nary travel, appeared, curiously enough, a few months before Innocents Abroad. De Mille's posthumous novel, A Strange Manu script found in a Copper Cylinder (1888), is a penetrating satire upon the modern worship of wealth. In form it anticipated the romances of Rider Haggard. Sir Gilbert Parker (1862-1932) has made good use in many of his novels of the inexhaustible stores of romantic and dramatic material that lie buried in forgotten pages of Canadian history. Charles W. Gordon, "Ralph Connor" (186o
7) was probably the most popular of Canadian novelists. His stories deal largely with pioneer life in the West, as those of Robert Stead (b. 188o) are devoted to western farm life of the present day. Sara Jeannette Duncan (Mrs. Everard Cotes, 1862-1922) published a very entertaining book of travel fiction, A Social Departure, in 1890. Between that year and 1914 she wrote nearly a score of light and readable novels. Lucy M. Montgomery (Mrs. McDonald, b. 1877) and Frederick William Wallace (b. 1886) stand easily first among present-day novelists of the Maritime Provinces. In Anne of Green Gables (1908) and its successors Mrs. McDonald has written a series of very delightful books for girls. Mark Twain wrote to a friend, according to Dr. Mac Mechan, "In Anne Shirley you will find the dearest and most moving and delightful child of fiction since the immortal Alice." F. W. Wallace is the author of a number of stories of the deep sea fishermen of Nova Scotia and the glorious days of the "Blue nose" clipper ships. He has also produced two more serious books. Wooden Ships and Iron Men (n.d.) and a sequel In the Wake of the Wind Ships (1927). While these two are not fiction, C. H. J. Snider has combined history with fiction in his tales of the Great Lakes and the war of 1812, In the lVake of the Eighteen Twelvers (1913) and other books of the same character. Mrs. L. Adams Beck, of Victoria, B. C. (d. 1931), wrote tales of the Orient under her own name, and equally readable historical novels under the pen-name of "E. Barrington." In the Prairie Provinces a rather remarkable group of Scandinavian-Canadian novelists has been doing good work in the interpretation of the life of their people in the new environment of the Canadian west. The outstanding names in this group are Martha Ostenso, Philip Grove, and Laura Salverson. Both the first-named and Mazo de la Roche, of To ronto, have won very large money prizes against hundreds of competitors in fiction contests in the United States. An excep tionally effective group of short stories is Marjorie Pickthall's Angels' Shoes (1923), and a remarkable autobiography in the form of fiction is Philip Grove's A Search for America (1927).
Children's books of distinct merit are Cyrus MacMillan's Cana dian Wonder Tales (1918) and Canadian Fairy Tales (1922), H. A. Kennedy's New World Fairy Book (19o4), Isabel Eccleston Mackay's The Shining Ship (1918), Marjory MacMurchy's The Child's House (1923), T. G. Marquis' The King's Wish (1924), which has been put into Braille type for the blind, Marshall Saun ders' Jimmy Goldcoast (1924), Helen B. Sandwell's Valley of Colour Days (1924) and the animal stories of Charles G. D. Roberts and Ernest Thompson Seton.
Thomas Chandler Haliburton (q.v.) stands in a class by himself. In many respects he is the most striking figure in Canadian litera ture. He is befit known as a humorist, and he has been compared with the creators of "My Uncle Toby" and Pickwick. But there is more than humour in Haliburton's books. He lacked, in fact, but one quality to make him a great novelist : he had no concep tion of how to construct a plot. But he knew human nature, and knew it intimately in many of its phases; he could construct a character and endow it with life; his people talk naturally and to the point ; and many of his descriptive passages are admirable. Those who read Haliburton's books only for the sake of their humour will miss much of their value. His inimitable Clockmaker (183 7) as well as such of his later books as The Old Judge (1849), The Attaché (1843), Wise Saws and Modern Instances (1853) and Natur3 and Human Nature (1855), are mirrors of colonial life and character.
J. Morgan, Bibliotheca Canadensis (1867) and Bibliography.-H. J. Morgan, Bibliotheca Canadensis (1867) and Canadian Men and Women of the Times (1912) ; J. Bourinot, Intel lectual Development of the Canadian People (1881) ; G. Mercer Adam, Outline History of Canadian Literature (1887) ; J. C. Hopkins, J. Reade, A. B. de Mille and Th. O'Hagan in Canada: an Encyclopaedia of the Country, edit. J. C. Hopkins (1898) ; C. C. James, Bibliography of Canadian Poetry (1899) ; S. E. Dawson, Prose Writers of Canada (19o1) ; L. E. Horning and L. J. Burpee, Bibliography of Canadian Fiction (1904) ; A. MacMurchy, Handbook of Canadian Literature (1906) ; L. J. Burpee, Canadian Essays (191o) ; T. G. Marquis, "History of English-Canadian Literature," in Canada and its Provinces (1913) ; R. P. Baker, History of English-Canadian Literature to the Confederation (192o) ; A. MacMechan, Headwaters of Canadian Literature (1924) ; J. D. Logan and D. G. French, Highways of Canadian Literature (1924) ; Lorne Pierce, Outline of Canadian Literature (5927). See also J. Cappon, Roberts and the Influence of his Time (19os) ; H. D. C. Lee, Bliss Carman (1912) ; Pelham Edgar, "English Canadian Literature," Camb. Hist. Eng. Lit. vol. xiv.
. (L. J. B.)
