So I was poking around the Lorne Pierce collection today and came across this list submitted to a UNESCO committee on culture. These are the books of Canadian literature worth reading and perhaps more. Quite a spectacle.


List of Canadian Books of Special Merit Written in English, CAA 1948

Bird, Will. Sunrise for Peter.
Birney, Earle. The Strait of Anian
Blake, W.H. Brown Waters.
Brebner, John. North Atlantic Triangle.
Brown, Audrey Alexander. A Dryad in Naniamo.
Buchanan, Donald. James Wilson Morrice.
Burpee, Lawrence. The Search for the Western Sea.
Callaghan, Morley. Now that April’s Here.
Campbell, Wilfred. The Poetical Works.
Cappon, James. Bliss Carman.
Carman, Bliss. Poems.
Carr, Emily. Klee Wyck.
Clark, A.F.B. Jean Racine.
Connor, Ralph. Postscript to Adventure.
Cragg, Kenneth. Father on the Farm.
Crawford, Isabella. Collected Poems.
Davies, Robertson. The Diary of Samuel Marchbanks.
de la Roche, Mazo. Whiteoak Chronicles.
Denny, Cecil. The Law Marches West.
Drummond, William. Complete Poems.
Dunham, Mabel. Grand River.
Edgar, Pelham. The Art of the Novel.
Fairley, Barker. A Study of Goethe.
Finch, Robert. Poems.
Frye, Northrop. Fearful Symmetry.
Godsell, Philip. Arctic Trader.
Graham, Angus. Napoleon Tremblay.
Graham, Gwethalyn. Earth and High Heaven.
Grey Owl. Pilgrims of the Wild.
Grove, F.G. Fruits of the Earth. Over Prairie Trails. A Search for America.
Haig, Kennethe. Brave Harvest.
Haliburton, Thomas. Sam Slick.
Hardy, W.G. All the Trumpets Sounded.
Heavysege, Charles. Saul.
Heming, Arthur. The Drama of the Forests.
Hughes, Katherine. Father Lacombe.
Jameson, Anna. Winter Studies.
Kane, Paul. Wanderings of an Artists among the Indians.
Kennedy, W.P. Lord Elgin.
Kirby, William. The Golden Dog.
Knox, Alexander. Bride of Quietness.
Lampman, Archibald. Selected Poems.
Landon, Fred. Lake Huron.
Leacock, Stephen. Leacock Roundabout. Sunshine Sketches of a Little Town.
Lower, A.R.M. From Colony to Nation.
MacDonald, Wilson. Out of the Wilderness.
MacInnes, Tom. Collected Poems.
MacKay, Douglas. The Honourable Company.
MacLennan, Hugh. Barometer Rising.
MacMechan, Archibald. Tales of the Sea.
MacNaughton, John. Lord Strathcona.
Macphail, Andrew. The Master’s Wife.
McArthur, Peter. In Pastures Green.
McDowell, Franklin. The Champlain Road.
McInnis, Edgar. The Unguarded Frontier.
Mitchell, W.O. Who Has Seen the Wind?
Moodie, Susanna. Roughing it in the Bush.
Munro, Ross. Gauntlet to Overlord.
New, Chester. Lord Durham.
Niven, Frederick. Mine Inheritance.
Norwood, Gilbert. Pindar.
Osler, William. The Master Word.
Pacey, Desmond. A Book of Canadian Stories.
Parker, Gilbert. When Valmond Came to Pontiac.
Pickthall, Marjorie. The Complete Poems.
Pratt, E.J. Collected Poems.
Radisson, Pierre. Voyages of Peter Esprit Radisson.
Raddall, Thomas. His Majesty’s Yankees.
Roberts, Charles G.D. Wisdom of the Wilderness. Selected Poems.
Roberts, Theodore. The Leather Bottle.
Robins, J.D. The Incomplete Anglers.
Robinson, Percy. Toronto During the French Regime.
Ross, Sinclair. As for me and my House.
Salverson, Laura. Confessions of an Immigran’t Daughter.
Saunders, Richard. Flashing Wings.
Schull, Joseph. The Legend of Lost Lagoon.
Scott, Duncan. Collected Poems. In the Village of Viger.
Seton, Ernest. Wild Animals I Have Known.
Simcoe, Mrs. John Graves. The Diary of Mrs. John Graves Simcoe.
Sinclair, Bertrand. Poor Man’s Rock.
Sissons, C.B. Egerton Ryerson.
Skelton, Oscar. Life and Letters of Laurier.
Slater, Patrick. The Yellow Briar.
Smith, A.J.M. The Book of Canadian Poetry.
Steele, Harwood. Policing the Arctic.
Stefansson, Vilhjammur. The Friendly Arctic.
Stevenson, Lloyd. Sir Frederick Banting.
Sullivan, Alan. Under the Northern Lights.
Tranter, G.J. Plowing the Arctic.
Wallace, Frederick. Salt Seas and Sailormen.
Waugh, W.T. James Wolfe.
Wells, Kenneth. The Owl Pen.
Wilson, R.A. The Birth of Language.
Wrong, George. The Canadians.

Selected by B.K. Sandwell, F.C. Jennings, W.S. Wallace, W.A. Deacon, Lorne Pierce, Philip Child, Watson Kirkconnel, and E.K. Brown.

My first reaction when I saw the list and before I started reading was to think of all the writers who probably wouldn't make it for so many different political reasons -- people like J.G. Syme, Oscar Ryan, and Joe Wallace. Then I started noticing the major ommission -- people like Brooker, Livesay (all 3), Arthur Stringer, and F. Pollock. But a funny feeling struck me as I realized how many of the names I hadn't heard of, how many of these books I hadn't read, hadn't even heard of. The panel who drew up the list obviously had their biases (all white wealthy men), but this was the list they collectively drew up of the most important books. There's a touch of Ozymandias in reading something like this. All that work, all the fights, all the endless hours, all the lines drawn in the sand over abstract aesthetic minutia -- every word fought over, edited, and paid for to put in print; all reviewed, considered, contested. It's a remarkable and sobering list to consider. Everything we think about, feel about, and ignore about this list will almost certainly be re-enacted sixty years from now.

I also read an account of a lovely debate between a number of poets including Marjorie Pickthall, about the merits of free verse in 1920. The group generally came to the consensus that it was a fad that really had no relationship to genuine poetry. You know, the kind of thing you can pick up and say, "that's a poem." It was proposed and accepted that all free verse poets were merely imitators, second-rate authors, whose importance was inevitably short-lived.

And just to show that these forgotten poets had some significance to the world around them, a few random numbers I also came across yesterday: Philip Child sold 4,000 copies of his first book, Wilson MacDonald sold 1,000 copies of “Miracle Song of Jesus” in 2 weeks. This was back before electronic-speed mass marketing, when the population of Canada was, what?, like 12 million or something. There are lots of facts and things about the world back then that makes this list of books astonishing.