The Canadian Novel In The Twentieth Century

In the first half of the twentieth century, a number of Canadian authors were revealed to have faked the identities that made them famous. What is extraordinary about these writers is that they actually "became," in everyday life, characters they had themselves invented. Many of their works were simultaneously fictional and autobiographical, reflecting the duality of their identities. In Literary Impostors, Rosmarin Heidenreich tells the intriguing stories, both the "true" and the fabricated versions, of six Canadian authors who obliterated their pasts and re-invented themselves: Grey Owl was in fact an Englishman named Archie Belaney; Will James, the cowboy writer from the American West, was the Quebec-born francophone Ernest Dufault; the prairie novelist Frederick Philip Grove turned out to be the German writer and translator Felix Paul Greve. Chief Buffalo Child Long Lance, Onoto Watanna, and Sui Sin Far were the chosen identities of three mixed-race writers whose given names were, respectively, Sylvester Long, Winnifred Eaton, and Edith Eaton. Heidenreich argues that their imposture, in some cases not discovered until long after their deaths, was not fraudulent in the usual sense: these writers forged new identities to become who they felt they really were. In an age of proliferating cyber-identities and controversial claims to ancestry, Literary Impostors raises timely questions involving race, migrancy, and gender to illustrate the porousness of the line that is often drawn between an author's biography and the fiction he or she produces.

The landmark Chelsea House Library of Literary Criticism, first published in the 1980s, is one of the most impressive collections of literary criticism ever produced. It is now available in digital format for the first time. This volume of the series provides excerpts and full-length critical essays on the Canadian novelist and poet Margaret Atwood.

"This study introduces the history, themes, and critical responses to Canadian fantastic literature. Taking a chronological approach, this volume covers the main periods of Canadian science fiction and fantasy from the early nineteenth century to the first decades of the twenty-first century. The book examines both the texts and the contexts of Canadian writing in the fantastic, analyzing themes and techniques in novels and short stories, and looking at both national and international contexts of the literature's history. This introduction will offer a coherent narrative of Canadian fantastic literature through analysis of the major texts and authors in the field and through relating the authors' work to the world around them"--

Frequently called the first Canadian novel, The History of Emily Montague, presents subversive views on traditional subjects like love and marriage and introduces such unique Canadian themes as the relationships between the Québecois and their British con