| Parent company | McClelland & Stewart |
|---|---|
| Founded | 1958 |
| Founder | Jack McClelland and Malcolm Ross |
| Country of origin | Canada |
| Headquarters location | Toronto |
| Publication types | Books |
| Official website | www |
The New Canadian Library is a publishing imprint of the Canadian company McClelland and Stewart. The series aims to present classic works of Canadian literature in paperback. [1] Each work published in the series includes a short essay by another notable Canadian writer, discussing the historical context and significance of the work. These essays were originally forewords, but after McClelland and Stewart's 1985 sale to Avie Bennett, the prefatory material was abandoned and replaced by afterwords. [2]
It was founded by Malcolm Ross with the intention of providing affordable material for his students; David Staines has been the general editor of the series since 1986. In 2007, the University of Toronto Press published New Canadian Library: The Ross-McClelland Years, 1952-1978, a work by Janet Beverly Friskney that provides an account of the New Canadian Library during the years of Ross's editorship.
Originally, all titles in the series were numbered sequentially.
Books published in the collection after the sequential numbering ceased were:
| Bertelsmann Home Entertainment |
| ||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Media assets | |||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
| Penguin Random House |
| ||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
| Other assets |
| ||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
| Authority control databases: National |
|---|
Canadian poetry is poetry of or typical of Canada. The term encompasses poetry written in Canada or by Canadian people in the official languages of English and French, and an increasingly prominent body of work in both other European and Indigenous languages.
Irving Peter Layton, OC was a Romanian-born Canadian poet. He was known for his "tell it like it is" style which won him a wide following but also made him enemies. As T. Jacobs notes in his biography (2001), Layton fought Puritanism throughout his life:
Layton's work had provided the bolt of lightning that was needed to split open the thin skin of conservatism and complacency in the poetry scene of the preceding century, allowing modern poetry to expose previously unseen richness and depth.
Earle Alfred Birney was a Canadian poet and novelist, who twice won the Governor General's Award, Canada's top literary honour, for his poetry.
Francis Reginald Scott (1899–1985), commonly known as Frank Scott or F. R. Scott, was a lawyer, Canadian poet, intellectual, and constitutional scholar. He helped found the first Canadian social democratic party, the Co-operative Commonwealth Federation, and its successor, the New Democratic Party. He won Canada's top literary prize, the Governor General's Award, twice, once for poetry and once for non-fiction. He was married to artist Marian Dale Scott.
Alfred Wellington Purdy was a 20th-century Canadian free verse poet. Purdy's writing career spanned fifty-six years. His works include thirty-nine books of poetry; a novel; two volumes of memoirs and four books of correspondence, in addition to his posthumous works. He has been called English Canada's "unofficial poet laureate" and "a national poet in a way that you only find occasionally in the life of a culture."
Louis Dudek, was a Canadian poet, academic, and publisher known for his role in defining Modernism in poetry, and for his literary criticism. He was the author of over two dozen books. In A Digital History of Canadian Poetry, writer Heather Prycz said that "As a critic, teacher and theoretician, Dudek influenced the teaching of Canadian poetry in most [Canadian] schools and universities".
Arthur James Marshall Smith was a Canadian poet and anthologist. He "was a prominent member of a group of Montreal poets" – the Montreal Group, which included Leon Edel, Leo Kennedy, A. M. Klein, and F. R. Scott — "who distinguished themselves by their modernism in a culture still rigidly rooted in Victorianism."
Ralph Barker Gustafson, CM was a Canadian poet and professor at Bishop's University.
Alfred Goldsworthy Bailey, was a Canadian educator, poet, anthropologist, ethno-historian, and academic administrator.
Nationality words link to articles with information on the nation's poetry or literature.
Nationality words link to articles with information on the nation's poetry or literature.
Nationality words link to articles with information on the nation's poetry or literature.
Nationality words link to articles with information on the nation's poetry or literature.
Nationality words link to articles with information on the nation's poetry or literature.
Malcolm Mackenzie Ross, was a notable Canadian literary critic.
Nationality words link to articles with information on the nation's poetry or literature.
The Double Hook is a novel written by Sheila Watson, which is considered "a seminal work in the development of contemporary Canadian literature." Published in 1959, The Double Hook is written in a style more like prose poetry than fiction. It is often considered to be Canada's first modernist novel due to how it "departs from traditional plot, character development, form and style to tell a poetic tale of human suffering and redemption that is at once fabular, allegorical and symbolic." The Canadian Encyclopedia declares that: "Publication of Watson's novel The Double Hook (1959) marks the start of contemporary writing in Canada."
Harold Edwin Standish was a Canadian poet and novelist, best known for his 1949 novel The Golden Time and his long poem The Lake of Souls (1957). A significant Canadian modernist along with the likes of Earle Birney, Douglas LePan, and Sheila Watson, Standish was known for his experiments with literary form and skeptical views of Canadian nationalism at a time, during the 1950s and 60s, when many Canadians sought to establish a distinctive literary tradition for Canada. Largely forgotten in recent years, his work remains significant for its vivid evocations of working class life in rural Southern Ontario.
Edward Killoran Brown, who wrote as E. K. Brown, was a Canadian professor and literary critic. He "influenced Canadian literature primarily through his award-winning book On Canadian Poetry (1943)," which "established the standards of excellence and many of the subsequent directions of Canadian criticism." Northrop Frye called him "the first critic to bring Canadian literature into its proper context".
Francis William Grey (1860–1939) was a British-born Canadian writer and academic. He was most noted for his 1899 novel The Curé of St. Philippe, which was republished by McClelland and Stewart's New Canadian Library series in 1970.
