Society of Young Nigerian Writers

Margaret Atwood

Margaret Atwood, born in 1939, Canadian poet, novelist, and critic, whose works

often feature women examining their relationships and society. Margaret Eleanor

Atwood was born in Ottawa, Ontario. She received a bachelor’s degree from the

University of Toronto in 1961 and a master’s degree from Radcliffe College in

1962. Atwood’s first book of poetry, Double Persephone, was published in 1961.

She continued writing while teaching English literature at various universities in

Canada from 1964 to 1972 and while acting as writer-in-residence at the

University of Toronto in 1972 and 1973.

Atwood’s first novel, The Edible Woman (1969), won international acclaim. Other

novels followed: Surfacing (1972), Lady Oracle (1976), and Life Before Man

(1979). Objecting to the classification of some of her works as feminist, Atwood

pointed out that she began dealing with themes such as growing up female in the

1950s and sex-role definitions before they were popularized by the women’s

liberation movement of the 1970s (see Women’s Rights). Her novel The

Handmaid's Tale (1985; motion picture, 1990) won a Governor General’s Literary

Award, Canada’s highest literary honor, and was followed by Cat’s Eye (1988),

The Robber Bride (1993), and Alias Grace (1996). The Handmaid’s Tale was

turned into an opera by Danish composer Poul Ruders in 2000.

Atwood’s books of poetry also won critical favor. The Circle Game (1966) won a

Governor General’s Literary Award in 1966, and Power Politics (1971) and You

Are Happy (1974) were also praised. Atwood’s critical works include Survival: A

Thematic Guide to Canadian Literature (1972), Second Words: Selected Critical

Prose (1982), and Strange Things: The Malevolent North in Canadian Literature

(1995). In addition, she edited The New Oxford Book of Canadian Verse in English

(1982) and The Oxford Book of Canadian Short Stories in English (1986). Her

other works include Wilderness Tips (1991), a collection of short stories; Good

Bones and Simple Murders (1994), a collection of prose sketches, updated fairy

tales, and parodies; and Morning in the Burned House (1995), a collection of

poetry. The body of Atwood’s work was awarded the Welsh Arts Council’s

International Writer’s Prize in 1982.

In 2000 Atwood won the prestigious Booker Prize for her novel The Blind Assassin

(2000). The annual award is given to the best full-length novel written in the

British Commonwealth. The novel tells the story of a woman who looks back on

her life and the events surrounding her sister’s early death. Atwood looked toward

the future in her next novel, Oryx and Crake (2003), and saw a bleak wasteland.

The Penelopiad (2005) was a retelling of Homer’s Odyssey from the point of view

of Odysseus’s wife, Penelope. Her collection of related short stories Moral

Disorder (2006) follows a Canadian family over the course of 60 years.

FRANCES MOORE BROOKE

Frances Moore Brooke (1723?-1789), British novelist, playwright, and translator. She

wrote what is generally considered the first Canadian novel, The History of Emily

Montague (1769), a book set primarily in the colony of Québec in the 1760s.

She was born Frances Moore in Claypole, Lincolnshire, England. When her father died in

1727, her mother moved the family to Peterborough, England. Brooke left home for

London in the late 1740s. During the next decade she became part of the British literary

and theatrical communities of her day. She married John Brooke, an Anglican minister, in

the mid-1750s. From 1755 to 1756 she edited, under the pseudonym Mary Singleton,

Spinster, the weekly journal The Old Maid, which covered theater, politics, and religion.

In 1756 she published a number of poems and a play, Virginia. Her translation of a

popular French novel by Marie-Jeanne Riccoboni appeared in 1760 under the English

title Letters from Juliet Lady Catesby, to Her Friend Lady Henrietta Campley. In 1763

Brooke moved to the British colony of Québec, where her husband was a military

chaplain. While in Québec she became a member of the elite social circle that surrounded

the colony’s governor. She returned to England in 1768.

Although Brooke wrote plays and exhibited a strong commitment to the theater

throughout her life, her literary reputation largely rests on her work as a novelist. In

keeping with the literary conventions of her day, she wrote novels of sentiment, a literary

form characterized by moral instruction and an emphasis on emotions. However, she

brought an aspect of realism to the form in her description of places and events. Her

books were written as a series of letters, following a style that was popular in 18th-

century European fiction.

The first of Brooke’s novels, The History of Lady Julia Mandeville (1763), met with

popular success at the time of its publication and was translated into French. It tells the

story of an ill-fated love affair between Julia Mandeville and her cousin, Harry

Mandeville. The story is recounted through letters, most of them authored by Harry or by

the lovers’ friend Lady Anne Wilmot, another character in the novel.

Brooke’s second novel, The History of Emily Montague, based on her experiences in

Québec, consists of 228 letters dated in 1766 and 1767. Through these letters, the reader

learns of the courtships of several couples and their ultimate achievement of happy

marriages. In the midst of this conventional domestic plot, Brooke included observations

on the customs and the political life of the colonists. The book was translated into Dutch

and French and was well received by the British press. Canadian scholars have since

found The History of Emily Montague of interest for its literary presentation and for its

documentation of the landscape and social life of Québec in the 1760s. During the

remainder of her life, Brooke translated two more French works, staged and published

several dramas, and produced one more novel, The Excursion (1777).

Morley Edward Callaghan

Morley Edward Callaghan (1903-1990), Canadian writer, who sought to

present truly Canadian characters in realistic situations. His first novel,

Strange Fugitive (1928), and several of his later works examine problems

faced by individuals who fail to conform to accepted social patterns.

Particularly popular were They Shall Inherit the Earth (1935) and The Loved

and the Lost (1955). A Fine and Private Place (1975) is the story of a writer

who desires recognition in his own country. Callaghan's short stories—a

collection of which was published in 1967—and his novels show a lean style,

the legacy of his friendship with the American novelist Ernest Hemingway.

Callaghan recounted this relationship in his memoir of the 1920s, That

Summer In Paris (1963). At the age of 80, Callaghan wrote another novel, A

Time for Judas (1984), a retelling of the story of Christ's betrayal.

LEONARD COHEN

Leonard Cohen, born in 1934, Canadian writer, singer-songwriter, and filmmaker, whose fiction

and poetry, combined with his fame as a composer and singer, have made him among the best-

known Canadians around the world.

Cohen was born into a Jewish family in Montréal, Québec. His father, who ran a family clothing

business, died when Cohen was nine. Cohen attended McGill University in Montréal, where he

was influenced and encouraged by professors and noted poets Louis Dudek and F. R. Scott. After

his graduation in 1955, he published his first book of poems, Let Us Compare Mythologies

(1956), and he briefly attended graduate school at Columbia University in New York City.

Subsequently, he traveled in Europe and decided to settle down on the Greek island of Hydra,

where he lived and wrote for the next several years. After his return to North America he lived at

various times in Nashville, Tennessee; New York City; Montréal; and Los Angeles, California.

In 1961 Cohen published his second collection of poetry, The Spice-Box of Earth, which began

his first period of popular and critical acclaim as a writer, both in Canada and abroad. Soon after,

his first novel, The Favourite Game (1963), appeared, followed by another collection of poems,

Flowers for Hitler (1964), and the novel Beautiful Losers (1966). These books represent the

diversity of Cohen’s artistic vision, demonstrating his ability to write convincingly of romantic

love and spiritual despair. His stories of saintly self-denial found a wide audience among the

youth of the 1960s.

In the mid-1960s Cohen turned to songwriting, and he saw his brooding folk ballads turned into

hit recordings by performers such as Judy Collins. He began performing the songs himself, and

in 1968 he released his first record, Songs of Leonard Cohen, which featured his signature song,

“Suzanne.” In that same year his Selected Poems (1968) was chosen for the Governor General’s

Literary Award, which he declined. Cohen published several more books of poetry, including the

experimental and fragmentary poems of The Energy of Slaves (1972). His 1984 collection, Book

of Mercy, marked his return to spiritual themes.

During the 1970s he focused primarily on his musical career, finding success with the records

Songs from a Room (1969), Songs of Love and Hate (1971), and New Skin for the Old Ceremony

(1974). His recordings of the late 1970s, Death of a Ladies’ Man (1977) and Recent Songs

(1979) received less popular and critical attention.

ROBERTSON DAVIES

Robertson Davies (1913-1995), Canadian novelist, essayist, and playwright, best known

for three trilogies about Canadian life that are distinguished by their firm moral sense,

narrative strength, and elegant use of myth, reality, and illusion. Davies uses a variety of

approaches—including comedy, satire, myth, coming-of-age fiction, allegory, and

historical romance—to depict Canadian subjects. His fiction is concerned primarily with

the survival of the human spirit in his characters, who quest for their own place in the

world while trying not to hurt others.

Born William Robertson Davies in Thamesville, Ontario, he was educated at Queen's

University in Kingston, Ontario, and at Balliol College, University of Oxford, in Oxford,

England. Later he became an actor; the editor and publisher of the Examiner

(Peterborough, Ontario) from 1942 to 1962; and a professor of English at the University

of Toronto from 1960 to 1981. As a teacher he specialized in English drama and was

master of Massey College.

Davies's three noted trilogies are the Salterton Trilogy (Tempest-Tost, 1951; Leaven of

Malice, 1954; and A Mixture of Frailties, 1958), which is slow-paced in the style of the

Victorian novel (see English Literature: The Victorian Novel); the Deptford Trilogy

(Fifth Business, 1970; The Manticore, 1972; and World of Wonders, 1976), which is

heavily influenced by Davies's Jungian views of psychology (see Carl Gustav Jung); and

the Cornish Trilogy (The Rebel Angels, 1981; What's Bred in the Bone, 1985; and The

Lyre of Orpheus, 1988), which draws on Jungian themes and is heavily allegorical.

Davies also wrote four volumes of the collected diaries and essays of “Samuel

Marchbanks,” a fictional Canadian provincial whom Davies called his “cranky alter ego.”

As a playwright, Davies achieved his greatest success with historical dramas employing

18th- and 19th-century settings, including At My Heart's Core (1952), A Jig for the Gypsy

(1954), Hunting Stuart (1955), and General Confession (1956). His final work, the novel

The Cunning Man, was published in 1994.

MAZO DE LA ROCHE

Mazo de la Roche (1879-1961), Canadian writer, born in Newmarket,

Ontario. Her novel Jalna (1927), which won the Atlantic Monthly prize,

was the first of a series centered on several generations of the Whiteoak

family on their estate in rural Ontario between 1852 and 1954. Noted for

its absorbing narrative and vividly drawn characters, de la Roche's series

was extraordinarily popular. Other novels in the series include

Whiteoaks of Jalna (1929), The Master of Jalna (1933), Whiteoak

Harvest (1936), The Building of Jalna (1944), and Return to Jalna

(1946). De la Roche also wrote the plays Low Life (1928) and Whiteoaks

(1936), A History of the Port of Québec (1944), and the autobiography

Ringing the Changes (1956).

Philippe Joseph Aubert de Gaspé

Philippe Joseph Aubert de Gaspé (1786-1871), French-Canadian

novelist, born in Québec. He wrote what is considered the first

noteworthy French-Canadian novel, Les anciens canadiens (1863;

The Canadians of Old,1864). This historical romance is set in the

1760s and describes life in Québec, from folklore to contemporary

social mores, but focuses on the growing suspicion of the British,

who had then begun their rule over Canada.

WILLIAM GIBSON

William Gibson (author), born in 1948, American-born Canadian author, a pioneer in

cyberpunk literature. Cyberpunk is a genre of science-fiction writing that portrays worlds

of the near future in which decentralized societies are saturated in complex technology

and are dominated by large, multinational corporations.

Born William Ford Gibson in Conway, South Carolina, he was educated at the University

of British Columbia, Canada. His first science-fiction stories were published in the late

1970s, many of them in the science magazine Omni.

Gibson’s first book, Neuromancer (1984), is acknowledged as the first cyberpunk novel

and is widely considered to be the most important science-fiction work of the 1980s. The

book portrays an impersonal world in which individual rights are constantly threatened

by the corporate conglomerates that control society. The heroes of the book, Case and

Molly, have bodies that are cybernetically enhanced—that is, altered to include

mechanical and electronic elements. They use their abilities to work directly in

cyberspace, the world created by the interface between the human mind and computer

networks. Case and Molly identify and steal computer data for their bosses but at the

same time question their actions.

The language used in Neuromancer contributed strongly to the development of a

cyberpunk vocabulary, incorporating words such as cyberspace and virtual reality (a

computer-simulated environment resembling the real world). The novel also addresses

the possibility of a disastrous and devastating future and the issues inherent in the

technological alteration of the human body. Neuromancer won the Nebula Award (1984)

and the Hugo Award (1985), two of the major prizes for science-fiction literature.

Gibson has also experimented with alternate literary forms. Dream Jumbo (1989) is text

intended to accompany performance art. The Difference Engine (1990), coauthored with

American writer Bruce Sterling, utilizes elements of the detective story and historical

thriller literary forms in its narrative of an alternate Victorian England (mid- and late 19th

century), one in which the Industrial Revolution is powered by computers. Agrippa, A

Book of the Dead (1992), a poem about Gibson’s father, was produced as a set of images

and text encoded on computer diskette and designed to erode rapidly once it had been

read.

Gibson’s other cyberpunk works include Burning Chrome (1986), a short-story collection

that includes “Johnny Mnemonic,” which was made into a motion picture in 1995 for

which Gibson wrote the script; and the novels Count Zero (1986), Mona Lisa Overdrive

(1988), Virtual Light (1993), Idoru (1996), and All Tomorrow’s Parties (1999). Despite

their typically cyberpunk preoccupation with technology and the media, Gibson’s later

novels, Pattern Recognition (2003) and Spook Country (2007), depart from convention

by being set in the present day.

CHARLES WILLIAM GORDON

Charles William Gordon (1860-1937), Canadian clergyman and author, who wrote

internationally best-selling works of popular fiction under the pseudonym Ralph Connor.

Gordon, the son of a Presbyterian minister, was born in the pioneer area of Glengarry

County, Canada West (now Ontario). After earning bachelor’s degrees at the University

of Toronto in 1883 and Knox College in Toronto in 1887, he studied theology for a year

at the University of Edinburgh in Scotland. Gordon was ordained as a Presbyterian

minister in 1890 and served for three years as a missionary in the vicinity of Banff,

Alberta. In 1894 he took up a ministry at Saint Stephen’s Church on the outskirts of

Winnipeg, Manitoba. His work at Saint Stephen’s was Gordon’s primary vocation for the

rest of his life.

However, his church work was interrupted by other jobs. During World War I (1914-

1918) he served as a chaplain in the Canadian forces and undertook a lecture tour of the

United States in 1917 to encourage the United States to enter the war. From 1920 to 1924

Gordon chaired the Manitoba Council of Industry, a body formed to mediate labor

disputes in the wake of the Winnipeg General Strike of 1919. From 1921 to 1922 he

served as moderator of the Presbyterian Church in Canada.

Gordon used his experiences as a Presbyterian minister in the Canadian West in his other

career as a best-selling author. He wrote his first fictional story in 1896 when James

MacDonald, the editor of the Toronto-based Westminster Magazine, challenged Gordon

to write about the West in order to encourage support for missions there. The success of

his first tale, published under the pseudonym Ralph Connor, led him to extend the story

into a serial for the magazine, which was later collected in Black Rock: A Tale of the

Selkirks (1898). Black Rock found immediate popular international acclaim, and Gordon

followed it with a string of successful novels of missionary adventure. His first three

novels, Black Rock, The Sky Pilot (1899), and The Man from Glengarry (1901), sold over

5 million copies worldwide. The novels spread Gordon’s belief in a vigorous Christian

evangelism bringing a civilizing influence to the anarchy of the frontier.

Gordon wrote over 20 novels as Ralph Connor. His later, less popular novels drew on

sources such as his experience of World War I, as in The Major (1917) and The Sky Pilot

in No Man’s Land (1919). His reflections on labor and economics influenced To Him

That Hath (1921) and The Arm of Gold (1932). Canadian critics have tended to focus on

Gordon’s two novels set in Ontario, The Man from Glengarry and Glengarry School

Days (1902), as possessing the greatest literary merit. Historians, on the other hand, have

turned to a variety of the novels for insight into Canada’s cultural and religious past. In

addition to his many novels, Gordon also authored The Life of James Robertson (1908), a

biography of the minister who originally inspired Gordon’s interest in the Western

missions, and his own autobiography, Postscript to Adventure (1938).

FREDERICK PHILIP GROVE

Frederick Philip Grove (1879-1948), German-born Canadian novelist and essayist, one of

the most colorful figures in Canadian literary history and among the first Canadian

authors of realist fiction.

Throughout his years in Canada, Grove misrepresented the facts of his early life,

claiming that he was born to wealthy parents in Russia, was raised in Sweden, and had

lived in Canada since 1892. It was not until 1973 that biographer D. O. Spettigue pieced

together the true story of Grove’s early years in Europe. Born Felix Paul Greve in

Radomno, Germany, in what is now Poland, Grove received his early education in

Hamburg. As a young man he made two attempts at a university education, but he failed

to complete a degree.

In 1902 Grove privately published a volume of verse, Wanderungen (Journeys), and a

verse drama, Helena und Damon. In pursuit of a literary life and financial security, he

wrote articles and literary criticism and translated foreign authors into German. This

fledgling career was interrupted in 1903, when he was convicted of fraud and imprisoned

for a year.

Upon his release, Grove again took up translation work as a means of income. He also

published more of his own original work, including two novels, Fanny Essler (1905;

translated 1984) and Maurermeister Ihles Haus (1906; The Master Mason’s House,

1976). When he experienced financial difficulties in 1909, he faked his suicide and left

Europe for the United States. In 1912 he appeared in Manitoba, Canada, where he taught

under the name Fred Grove.

Grove began publishing book-length English-language works in Canada in 1922. The

first was Over Prairie Trails (1922), a series of descriptive essays of the author’s weekly

journeys into the Manitoba bush country. In 1923 Grove published a second, similarly

structured volume, The Turn of the Year. The first of his novels set in the Canadian West,

Settlers of the Marsh, appeared in 1925; it was followed by Our Daily Bread (1928), The

Yoke of Life (1930), and Fruits of the Earth (1933). He also wrote two novels set in

Ontario, Two Generations (1939) and The Master of the Mill (1944). His English-

language novels, known for their detailed realism, follow pioneer families as they

struggle with generational tensions and the forces of progress and nature. Grove changed

direction in his final novel, Consider Her Ways (1947), in which he satirically examined

humankind from the perspective of an ant.

Grove also published two books that blur the line between fiction and autobiography. A

Search for America (1927), one of his most successful works, was presented as fiction

but was founded in the events of his own life. In Search of Myself (1946) was labelled an

autobiography but was later revealed to be mostly fabricated. Nevertheless, In Search of

Myself won the Governor General’s Literary Award for nonfiction in 1946.

ANNE HÉBERT

Anne Hébert (1916-2000), French-Canadian poet and novelist, much of whose

work describes the conflict between the outer, modern world and the inner life of

the creative artist. Born in Saint-Catherine-de-Fossambault, Québec, Hébert grew

up in the city of Québec. She moved to Paris in the mid-1950s. In her books Hébert

explores the sense of alienation and isolation felt by artists, but she also stresses the

need to work in the everyday world as a way to spiritual redemption. She is known

for her precise descriptions of the physical world.

Many of Hébert's works explore the theme of awareness after revolt against violent

oppression. Her first novel, Les chambres de bois (1958; The Silent Rooms,1974),

is the story of a young woman who returns to a more natural and simple life after

being imprisoned by her husband. Hébert's later novels—such as Kamouraska

(1970; translated 1973); Les enfants du sabbat (1975; Children of the Black

Sabbath,1977); and Les fous de Bassan (1982; In the Shadow of the Wind,1983)—

are stories of demonic possession and murder. Hébert's other works include the

novels Le premier jardin (1988) and L'enfant charge du songes (1992); the poetry

volumes Les songes en equilibre (Dreams in Equilibrium, 1942) and Le jour n'a

d'egal que la nuit (Day Has No Equal but Night, 1994); and the short-story

collection Le torrent (1950).

ALOOTOOK IPELLIE

Alootook Ipellie, born in 1951, Canadian Inuit author, editor, artist, and cartoonist, whose Arctic

Dreams and Nightmares (1993) was the first published collection of short stories by an Inuit

writer. Inuit life in the Arctic region of Canada changed significantly during the 20th century.

The traditional Inuit nomadic life, based on hunting and fishing, was largely replaced by life in

settlements that more closely resembled those of southern Canada. Ipellie's life and creative

work vividly reflect this period of change among the Inuit of Canada.

Ipellie was born at a hunting camp on Baffin Island in what is now Nunavut, Canada. Although

he and his family continued to be involved with some seasonal hunting, the family spent most of

its time in the town of Frobisher Bay (now Iqaluit), Nunavut's largest community. His early

education was in Iqaluit, but because there was no high school in the community, he had to leave

for further education in Yellowknife, Northwest Territories, and later in Ottawa, Ontario. At

Ottawa's High School of Commerce, Ipellie first developed his drawing skills.

Ipellie settled in Ottawa, but he continued to create work for and about the Inuit in the north. In

the early 1970s he did translations between English and the Inuit language of Inuktitut, worked

as a journalist, and drew cartoons for Inuit Monthly (later renamed Inuit Today) magazine. Ipellie

served as editor of Inuit Today from 1979 to 1982. In the 1970s his ongoing cartoon strip “Ice

Box” in Inuit Today provided a humorous, critical view of life for Inuit in the changing north. A

later strip, “Nuna and Vut,” which appeared in Iqaluit's Nunatsiaq News in the 1990s, continued

his satiric look at a life of transition in the Arctic. His pen-and-ink drawings have been featured

at exhibitions in Canada, Norway, and Greenland.

Ipellie's nonfiction writing, such as his series of articles, “Those Were the Days,” in Inuit

Monthly (1974-1976), depicts how the lifestyle, religion, politics, language, and culture of the

south have affected the Inuit way of life. His poetry, such as “Take Me to Your Leader” (1980)

and “Walking Both Sides of an Invisible Border” (1992), also illustrates his attention to the

effects of change on Inuit life.

Ipellie has become best known as a writer of short fiction. His stories, like his poems, have

appeared in many literary journals, magazines, and anthologies. One of his early stories, “Nipikti

the Old Man Carver” (1976), is a gentle reflection by an old man on how things used to be in

simpler times in the north.

HUGH MACLENNAN

Hugh MacLennan (1907-1990), Canadian novelist, essayist, and

professor of English at McGill University. His first novel,

Barometer Rising (1941), concerns an actual happening, the

explosion of a munitions ship that almost destroyed Halifax, Nova

Scotia, in 1917. Later works include Two Solitudes (1945), about

Anglo-French relations in Canada; The Watch That Ends the Night

(1959), a psychological study; and Voices in Time (1980). Among

MacLennans's collections of essays are Cross Country, (1949),

Thirty and Three (1954), and Seven Rivers of Canada (1961).

L. M. MONTGOMERY

L. M. Montgomery (1874-1942), Canadian writer, best known for her

nostalgic novels for children set on Prince Edward Island. Born in Clifton

(now New London), Prince Edward Island, Lucy Maud Montgomery was

raised by her grandparents in the nearby town of Cavendish after her mother

died and her father moved to Prince Albert, Saskatchewan. She was educated

at Dalhousie University in Halifax, Nova Scotia, and Prince of Wales College

in Charlottetown, Prince Edward Island. After working as a teacher for three

years and as a newspaperwoman on the Halifax Daily Echo for a year,

Montgomery, who had been writing since childhood, began publishing stories

and poems in newspapers and children's magazines. Her first novel, Anne of

Green Gables (1908), was an instant success in Canada and the United States

and is now considered a classic of children's literature. Anne, the heroine, is a

spirited, independent orphan with an active imagination and a penchant for

mishap who wins the hearts of the elderly brother and sister who adopt her.

Montgomery chronicled her heroine Anne's career, marriage, and family in

five additional novels, including Anne of Avonlea (1909) and Anne of the

Island (1915). She also wrote two related books: Rainbow Valley (1919) and

Rilla of Ingleside (1921), about one of Anne's daughters. Montgomery wrote

other children's novels, including a popular series about another young

orphan, Emily Byrd Starr, which includes the books Emily of New Moon

(1923) and Emily's Quest (1927). Montgomery was awarded the Order of the

British Empire in 1935. Anne of Green Gables has been made into several

motion pictures, as well as a popular television series.

SUSANNA MOODIE

Susanna Moodie (1803-1885), British-born Canadian author and pioneer, best known for

her literary account of her settlement experience, Roughing It in the Bush (1852).

She was born Susanna Strickland in Bungay, Suffolk, England, but spent most of her

childhood near Southwold, Suffolk, where she was educated at home. Following her

father’s death in 1818, Strickland, along with four of her sisters, began to write for

publication to help with the family’s financial difficulties. In addition to contributing

poetry and prose to annuals and periodicals, she wrote a number of children’s books,

coauthored Patriotic Songs (1830) with her sister Agnes, and issued Enthusiasm, and

Other Poems (1831). She also transcribed two slave narratives, The History of Mary

Prince, a West Indian Slave, Related by Herself (1831) and Negro Slavery Described by a

Negro (1831).

In 1831 she married John W. D. Moodie. The next year, in a bid to improve their

economic prospects, they set sail for Upper Canada (now Ontario). Moodie’s sister,

Catharine Parr Traill, also a writer, immigrated to Upper Canada the same year. Upon

their arrival, the Moodies settled on a farm near Cobourg, on Lake Ontario. In 1834 they

sold the farm and took up land in the backwoods of Douro township. The family moved

to the more settled area of Belleville in 1840 when John Moodie became sheriff of

Hastings County.

After moving to Upper Canada, Moodie sought outlets for her writing in North America.

The Literary Garland, a journal published in Montréal, proved a major vehicle for her

writing through the 1840s and an important source of income. She and her husband also

edited and wrote for Victoria Magazine, a periodical aimed at the Canadian working

class, from 1847 to 1848.

Some of the Canadian sketches she wrote for the Literary Garland were reworked and

collected in Roughing It in the Bush, Moodie’s most enduring work. In that book Moodie

blurs the boundary between autobiography and fiction, making her own authorial

personality central to her descriptions of local characters and customs. Her book is a

cautionary tale that warns against the hardships of Canadian settlement, but it also reveals

Moodie’s fascination with her pioneer experience. She followed that work with Life in

the Clearings Versus the Bush (1853), a volume of sketches that takes up her story from

her settlement in Belleville. In the novel Flora Lyndsay (1854), she turned the events of

her arrival in Canada into fiction. In the 1850s she also published several more

sensational and romantic novels that were set outside of Canada. After her husband’s

death in 1869, Moodie joined her son Robert’s household, living with him first in

Seaforth, Ontario, and then Toronto.

Two collections of her letters, Susanna Moodie: Letters of a Lifetime (1985) and Letters

of Love and Duty (1993), capture a more private Moodie. A number of Canada’s

contemporary writers, including Margaret Atwood, Carol Shields, and Timothy Findley,

have offered their own distinct interpretations of this Canadian pioneer by having her

figure in their literary works.

FARLEY MOWAT

Farley Mowat, born in 1921, Canadian writer and naturalist, known for his passionate and

often controversial accounts of the impact of modern society on traditional cultures and

the natural wilderness. His passion and talent for storytelling earned him critical praise

and an international readership, making him one of Canada's most widely read authors.

Mowat was born in Belleville, Ontario, and grew up in Windsor, Ontario, and Saskatoon,

Saskatchewan. He studied at the University of Toronto but left to enlist in the army at the

beginning of World War II (1939-1945). After the war, the Canadian government sent

him to the Arctic to study wolves, an experience which led to his most important early

books, including People of the Deer (1952), Lost in the Barrens (1956), and Never Cry

Wolf (1963). He returned to the University of Toronto, where he received a B.A. degree

in 1949. In subsequent years he spent long periods living in small Newfoundland villages

and on Nova Scotia’s Cape Breton Island.

Mowat’s first book, People of the Deer, indicts the Canadian government for its

treatment of the Inuit and is based on his observations from living in the Arctic. Its

publication brought Mowat immediate celebrity and controversy, which stayed with him

throughout his career. He published The Desperate People, a follow-up book on the Inuit,

in 1959. His experience in the Arctic also provided the foundation for Never Cry Wolf, an

influential and sympathetic account of the lives of wolves. These early books established

Mowat as a writer who used sharply told tales to support his positions on environmental

and political matters.

The books were controversial not only for their positions but for Mowat’s emphasis on

good storytelling at the expense of strict factual accuracy. He defended his style by

describing his work as “subjective nonfiction,” which remains true to the essence of facts

and experience. He also criticized the treatment of the Inuit and the abuse of the

environment in Canada North (1967), Canada North Now: The Great Betrayal (1976), A

Whale for the Killing (1972), and The Sea of Slaughter (1984). In 1985 his outspoken

pronouncements led the United States Immigration and Naturalization Service to bar him

temporarily from entering the country, an episode he happily satirized in My Discovery of

America (1985).

Many of Mowat’s other nonfiction books reflect his fascination with Arctic explorers and

ocean-going societies. Westviking: The Ancient Norse in Greenland and North America

(1965) and The Farfarers: Before the Norse (1998) are speculative accounts of early

European visitors to North America. His Top of the World trilogy, Ordeal by Ice (1960),

The Polar Passion (1967), and Tundra (1973), collects explorers’ accounts of the Arctic.

His books about the sea also include The Grey Seas Under (1958) and The Serpent’s Coil

(1961).

Mowat is also widely loved for his books for young people. Among these are the novels

Lost in the Barrens, for which he received a Governor General's Literary Award for

fiction, and Curse of the Viking Grave (1974). He has written humorous memoirs for the

same audience: The Dog Who Wouldn't Be (1957), Owls in the Family (1961), and The

Boat Who Wouldn't Float (1969).

Michael Ondaatje

Michael Ondaatje, born in 1943, Canadian writer and filmmaker whose novel The

English Patient (1992) was cowinner of the 1992 Booker Prize, the United Kingdom’s

most prestigious literary award. Ondaatje was the first Canadian to receive the prize.

Ondaatje was born in Colombo, Sri Lanka, the fourth child of a privileged family of

Dutch, Tamil, and Sinhalese origin. He lived with his father in Sri Lanka until 1954

when, at the age of 11, he moved to England to live with his mother. While in England he

attended Dulwich College. In 1962 he emigrated to Canada, where he studied at Bishop’s

University, Lennoxville, Québec, concentrating in English literature and history. It was

during this time that he began to write poetry. He transferred to the University of Toronto

in the last year of his studies and received his B.A. degree in 1965. He received his M.A.

degree from Queen’s University, Ontario, in 1967.

Although his poems had previously been included in anthologies, Ondaatje published his

first book of poetry, The Dairy Monsters, in 1967. Two more collections of poetry

followed: The Man with Seven Toes (1969) and Rat Jelly (1973). All three collections

were acclaimed for their surrealistic use of gruesome images and unexpected

juxtapositions. Later volumes of poetry include There’s a Trick With a Knife I’m

Learning to Do (1979) and The Cinnamon Peeler (1990).

Ondaatje’s novels combine poetry, prose, and visual representation, as well as fact and

fiction, as exemplified in The Collected Works of Billy the Kid (1970). His book Coming

Through Slaughter (1979) examines the life of New Orleans jazz musician Buddy

Bolden. Running in the Family (1982) is a semiautobiographical exploration of personal

and public myth, based on a trip by Ondaatje to the country of his birth. In the Skin of a

Lion (1987), one of his best-received works, is set in Toronto during the 1920s and

1930s.

The English Patient, Ondaatje’s best-known book, is the story of four people living in a

partially destroyed Italian villa at the end of World War II (1939-1945). Ondaatje

consulted on the screenplay of the motion picture adaptation of the novel; The English

Patient was released in 1996 and won nine Academy Awards, including the award for

best picture.

Ondaatje’s next book was the poetry collection Handwriting (1999). The novel Anil’s

Ghost (2000) focuses on a human rights worker and is set in Sri Lanka in the mid-1980s,

when a civil war was just beginning.

Ondaatje has been awarded the Governor General’s Literary Award, one of Canada’s

highest literary prizes, three times. He has won for The Collected Works of Billy the Kid

in 1970, for There’s a Trick With a Knife I’m Learning to Do in 1979, and for The

English Patient in 1992. In addition to writing, Ondaatje has produced dramatic

presentations of his works, has written and directed several short motion pictures, and has

edited three anthologies: the poetry collection The Broken Ark (1971), the short-story

collection Personal Fictions (1977), and The Long Poem Anthology (1979). He became a

professor of English at Glendon College, York University, Toronto, in 1971.

GILBERT PARKER

Gilbert Parker (1862-1932), Canadian novelist and poet, born in

Camden East, Ontario, and educated at the University of

Toronto. Parker was a newspaper editor in Sydney, Australia,

before settling in England, where he served in Parliament and

was made a baronet. He wrote romantic, unrealistic short stories

and novels about Canadian history and the Canadian West. Best

known is The Seats of the Mighty (1896), a novel about the fall

of Québec to the British in 1759. Parker also wrote When

Valmond Came to Pontiac (1895), about a legendary son of

Napoleon I, and The Power and the Glory (1925), glorifying the

French explorer René-Robert Cavelier, Sieur de La Salle.

MORDECAI RICHLER

Mordecai Richler (1931-2001), Canadian novelist, born in Montréal. His first

novel, The Acrobats (1954), concerns a Canadian painter living among

Spanish revolutionaries. Richler lived in England for several years, but his

subsequent books dealt realistically with the urban environment in which he

grew up. The Apprenticeship of Duddy Kravitz (1959), a satirical look at the

transformation of a Canadian Jewish boy into a calculating businessman, was

made into a successful film. Other novels include St. Urbain's Horseman

(1971) and Joshua, Then and Now (1980), which was also made into a film.

Richler was also an essayist of note. Among his collections are Hunting

Tigers Under Glass (1969) and Home Sweet Home: My Canadian Album

(1984), a mix of autobiography and journalistic essays. He also wrote the

controversial critique Oh Canada! Oh Québec! (1992) and Barney’s Version

(1997), a satirical fictional memoir.

CAROL SHIELDS

Carol Shields (1935-2003), Canadian American novelist, whose works deal with

what she has called “the texture of ordinary life.” Writing about simple people and

the emotional crises of their lives, Shields was awarded the 1995 Pulitzer Prize for

fiction for her novel The Stone Diaries (published in Canada, 1993; published in

the United States, 1994).

Carol Ann Warner was born in Oak Park, Illinois. She received a B.A. degree from

Hanover College in Indiana in 1957, the same year that she married Donald

Shields and moved to Canada. In 1972, at the urging of her husband, a professor at

the University of Ottawa, she began taking creative writing classes. In 1975 she

received an M.A. degree from the University of Ottawa. While working toward her

degree, Shields published two volumes of poetry, Others (1972) and Intersect

(1974). After graduating she began teaching English and creative writing, holding

positions at the University of Ottawa (1976-1977) and at the University of British

Columbia at Vancouver (1978-1980). Beginning in 1980 she taught at the

University of Manitoba at Winnipeg. Shields also began writing novels.

Shields’s first novel, Small Ceremonies (1976), is about a woman writing about

19th-century Canadian author Susanna Moodie. Over the next 16 years Shields’s

books earned positive reviews in the United States and Canada. Happenstance

(1980) is about a middle-aged woman who discovers her artistic talent as a

quiltmaker. Swann (1989) concerns a rivalry between Canadian academics. The

Stone Diaries is a detailed fictional account of the life of a Canadian woman born

in 1905. In addition to the Pulitzer Prize, this work won the 1993 Governor

General's Literary Award in Canada and the 1995 National Book Critics Circle

Award in the United States. Larry's Party (1997) chronicles 20 years in the life of a

mild-mannered, ordinary man named Larry Weller. The book won the 1998

Orange Prize in the United Kingdom.

CATHARINE PARR TRAILL

Catharine Parr Traill (1802-1899), British-born Canadian author, pioneer, and naturalist.

She wrote children’s stories and a notable account of Canadian settlement, The

Backwoods of Canada (1836).

She was born Catharine Parr Strickland in Kent, England, the fifth of eight children. She

spent most of her childhood and adolescence in rural Suffolk. Her father took a keen

interest in the education of his children, and as adolescents they composed stories and

plays for their own amusement. Her youngest sister later became known, as Susanna

Moodie, for her account of Canadian pioneering, Roughing It in the Bush (1852).

In 1818 her father died, which challenged the family both emotionally and financially.

Not long afterward, however, a method of easing the family’s finances surfaced when a

friend edited one of Catharine’s manuscripts and managed to sell it to a publisher.

Historical sources disagree about which manuscript that was, but her early books, all

children’s stories, include Disobedience; or, Mind What Mama Says (1819),

Reformation; or, The Cousins (1819), Little Downy; or, The History of a Field Mouse

(1822), and The Tell Tale (1823). She thus became a published author while still in her

mid-teens.

As a result of this success, Catharine and four of her sisters began to write seriously for

publication and its promise of money. In 1832 she married Thomas Traill. Almost

immediately afterward she and her husband immigrated to Upper Canada (now Ontario).

Over the next six decades she lived in various parts of the province, including Lake

Katchwanook, Peterborough, and Rice Lake. After the death of her husband in 1859, she

settled in Lakefield.

Traill’s other Canadian books include The Female Emigrant’s Guide (1854), a manual

for women settlers, and Lady Mary and Her Nurse; or, A Peep into the Canadian Forest

(1856), Canadian Wild Flowers (1868), and Studies of Plant Life in Canada (1885), all of

which reflect her great interest in local botany. A selection of Traill’s Canadian sketches

originally published in periodicals was published in Forest and Other Gleanings (1994),

and her selected correspondence was collected in I Bless You in My Heart (1996).