Status | Defunct |
---|---|
Founded | 1930 |
Founder | William H. Clarke, John C.W. Irwin, Irene Irwin Clarke |
Successor | Nelson Canada |
Country of origin | Canada |
Headquarters location | Toronto |
Publication types | Books |
Clarke, Irwin & Company was a Canadian publishing house based in Toronto, Ontario. Established in 1930, it was purchased by Thomas Nelson Publishing in 2002. The company published works by prominent Canadian authors, artists, and poets, including Robertson Davies, Emily Carr, A.Y. Jackson, Adele Wiseman, Timothy Findley, and Alden Nowlan. [1] The company was also known as a producer of educational works and textbooks.
In 1930, William H. Clarke, formerly of Maclean-Hunter Publishing and the Macmillan Company of Canada, partnered with John C.W. Irwin, a Toronto bookseller, to start a new publishing house. They were joined by Irene Irwin Clarke, Clarke's wife and Irwin's sister. The company quickly established publishing arrangements with several British and American book companies, including the University of London Press, George G. Harrap & Co., Henry Holt & Co., and Rinehart & Co. [1] The company started a lucrative trade in public school and university textbooks in the mid-1930s.
William Clarke began a partnership with the Oxford University Press (OUP) in 1936. [2] The Canadian division of the company had seen hard times during the Great Depression, and, after the death of its director Samuel Gundy, William Clarke was able to take control of OUP. The two imprints operated from the same address for the next thirteen years. The partnership was responsible for the first Bible completely printed and bound in Canada. [3]
The company saw commercial success with a Canadian writer with the publication of Emily Carr's Klee Wyck . Although originally released by OUP, Clarke, Irwin published an abridged educational version used heavily in Canadian schools. The collection of memoirs won the 1941 Governor General's Award for Literary Merit. By the early 1940s, the relationship between William Clarke and John Irwin had frayed. Irwin, a graduate from the University of Toronto's Faculty of Forestry, was an outspoken conservationist. Backlash from Irwin's many public speeches may have led to arguments between the two men. In 1943, Irwin left and started a rival company, the Book Society of Canada. [4]
After William Clarke died in 1955, Irene Irwin Clarke took over much of the managerial duties. By the 1960s, Clarke, Irwin had acquired publication rights from several more American and British publishing houses. A partnership with Jonathan Cape had popular spy novelists Ian Fleming and Len Deighton published under Clarke, Irwin in Canada. Through Chatto & Windus, the company was able to print several backlists, including authors such as Fyodor Dostoevsky and Lawrence Durrell. [5] In 1972, Clarke, Irwin became the first Canadian publisher to have a children's book editor when they hired author Janet Lunn. [6]
The company did well with its textbook division until the late 1960s, when the acquisition policies of Canadian public schools changed, ending preferential treatment for the company. Clarke, Irwin, & Company went into decline in the 1970s, reducing its editorial staff from forty-two to nine. William and Irene Clarke's son, William (Bill) Clarke, became managing director in the 1980s. Government loans kept it afloat until 1983, when the company went into receivership. It was purchased by former partner John Irwin's Book Society of Canada, now run by John's son. The imprint would see a name change to Irwin Company. It was sold to General Publishing, parent of Stoddart Publishing, in 1988. It was purchased by Thomas Nelson Publishing in 2002, which saw the end of the name in the publishing business. [1]
Apart from Carr's Klee Wyck, Clarke, Irwin had success with several other art related books, including A.Y. Jackson's autobiography, A Painter's Country: The Autobiography of A.Y. Jackson (1958) as well as a popular collection of Jackson's sketches, A.Y.'s Canada: Pencil Drawings by A.Y. Jackson (1968). Robertson Davies' first works were published by the company, including educational books like Shakespeare for Young Players (1942) and novels including The Diary of Samuel Marchbanks (1947) and Tempest-Tost (1951) . Although not a major source of poetry, Clarke, Irwin had success with Alden Nowlan's collection Bread, Wine and Salt in 1968. Quebec playwright Gratien Gélinas published several of his plays with the company. Timothy Findley was a late acquisition in 1978, before the sale to the Book Society of Canada. [1]
The company published many non-fiction works, and its textbooks and readers were common in Canadian schools. The "Canadian Portraits Series" introduced younger readers to Canadian authors. William Kilbourn's biography of William Lyon Mackenzie, The Firebrand, was received well among critics. [5] The Shape of Scandal, by journalist and civil servant Richard Gwyn, was one of the company's best selling books of the 1960s. [7] Bruce Hutchison's The Fraser (1950), a work on British Columbia's Fraser River, was part of Rinehart and Company's popular Rivers of America series. [8] Hilda Neatby's So Little for the Mind caused public debate about Canada's education system upon its release in 1953. [1]
The Group of Seven, once known as the Algonquin School, was a group of Canadian landscape painters from 1920 to 1933, with "a like vision". It originally consisted of Franklin Carmichael (1890–1945), Lawren Harris (1885–1970), A. Y. Jackson (1882–1974), Frank Johnston (1888–1949), Arthur Lismer (1885–1969), J. E. H. MacDonald (1873–1932), and Frederick Varley (1881–1969). A. J. Casson (1898–1992) was invited to join in 1926, Edwin Holgate (1892–1977) became a member in 1930, and Lionel LeMoine FitzGerald (1890–1956) joined in 1932.
Emily Carr was a Canadian artist who was inspired by the monumental art and villages of the First Nations and the landscapes of British Columbia. She also was a vivid writer and chronicler of life in her surroundings, praised for her "complete candour" and "strong prose". Klee Wyck, her first book, published in 1941, won the Governor General's Literary Award for non-fiction and this book and others written by her or compiled from her writings later are still much in demand today.
Marian Ruth Engel was a Canadian novelist and a founding member of the Writers' Union of Canada. Her most famous and controversial novel was Bear (1976), a tale of erotic love between an archivist and a bear.
Alden Albert Nowlan was a Canadian poet, novelist, and playwright.
Alexander Young Jackson LL. D. was a Canadian painter and a founding member of the Group of Seven. Jackson made a significant contribution to the development of art in Canada, and was instrumental in bringing together the artists of Montreal and Toronto. In addition to his work with the Group of Seven, his long career included serving as a war artist during World War I (1917–19) and teaching at the Banff School of Fine Arts, from 1943 to 1949. In his later years he was artist-in-residence at the McMichael Canadian Art Collection in Kleinburg, Ontario.
Lawren Stewart Harris LL. D. was a Canadian painter, best known as one of the founding members of the Group of Seven. He played a key role as a catalyst in Canadian art, as a visionary in Canadian landscape art and in the development of modern art in Canada.
Franklin Carmichael was a Canadian artist and member of the Group of Seven. Though he was primarily famous for his use of watercolours, he also used oil paints, charcoal and other media to capture the Ontario landscapes. Besides his work as a painter, he worked as a designer and illustrator, creating promotional brochures, advertisements in newspapers and magazines, and designing books. Near the end of his life, Carmichael taught in the Graphic Design and Commercial Art Department at the Ontario College of Art.
Anthony Patrick Cawthra Adamson was a Canadian architect, author, teacher, and municipal politician. He was a descendant of Joseph Cawthra through his mother.
John Robert Colombo, CM is a Canadian writer, editor, and poet. He has published over 200 titles, including major anthologies and reference works.
Elizabeth Winifred Brewster, was a Canadian poet, author, and academic.
Walter John Learning was a Canadian theatre director, actor, and founder of Theatre New Brunswick.
Margaret Rose Conrad is a Canadian historian specializing in the fields of Atlantic Canada and Women's history. She held the Canada Research Chair in Atlantic Canada Studies at the University of New Brunswick before retiring in 2009.
Roy MacSkimming is a Canadian novelist, non-fiction writer and cultural policy consultant.
The Studio Building in Toronto, Ontario, Canada, was the home and working studio of several of the Group of Seven painters, their predecessors, and their artistic descendants, and is of enormous significance in the history of Canadian art. The building was designated a National Historic Site of Canada in 2005. It was also designated by the City of Toronto under the Ontario Heritage Act through By-law 115-2003.
Pirates and Pathfinders is a Canadian elementary school textbook, originally published in 1947 by Clarke, Irwin, & Company. Marjorie Hamilton wrote the text; Lloyd Scott illustrated it. A revised French language edition was printed by Clarke, Irwin in 1955; the French title was La découverte du monde ; the text was translated by Louis Charbonneau.
William J. Wood was a Canadian painter, etcher
The Windsor Review is a bi-annual journal publishing new and established writers from North America and beyond. It was established in 1965 by Eugene McNamara, and was originally named The University of Windsor Review. The Windsor Review is one of Canada's oldest continuously published literary magazines, celebrating its 50th year in 2015.
Marjorie Elliott Wilkins Campbell was a Canadian writer of history and historical fiction. She won two Governor General's Literary Awards for the best works of the year, one of the two 1950 non-fiction awards for The Saskatchewan and the Governor General's Award for Juvenile Fiction in 1954 for The Nor'Westers.
Klee Wyck (1941) is a memoir by Canadian artist Emily Carr. Through short sketches, the artist tells of her experiences among First Nations people and cultures on British Columbia's west coast. The book won the 1941 Governor General's Award and occupies an important place in Canadian literature.
Kathryn Bridge is a Canadian writer, curator, archivist and historian who lives in Victoria, B.C. In 1978, she began to work at the British Columbia Archives where from 2012 to 2015 she was a Deputy Director. In 2017, she retired and was honoured as Curator Emerita.