Canadian Literature & Poetry
in English
Early Canadiana
Digital Collections
Early Canadiana Online
A digital collection of works in English and French published
from the time of the first European settlers up to the early twentieth century.
The collection includes colonial, provincial and federal
government publications, Jesuit relations texts, and an English Canadian literature
collection with over 800 works of drama, poetry and fiction, biography and exploration
written before 1900.
It also contains early dailies, weeklies, specialized journals
and mass-market magazines published up to 1930.
Early English Books Online
Full-text digitized works printed in British North America and
the United Kingdom between 1473 and 1700. Books about Canada mainly consist of exploration
narratives and missionary accounts.
Eighteenth-Century Collections Online
Full-text digitized works printed in Great Britain in the
eighteenth century, encompassing an early historical stage of Canadian writing.
Nineteenth-Century Collections Online
North American Women’s Letters and Diaries: Colonial to
1950
Twenty-seven diaries and other types of writing from Susanna
Moodie, Letitia MacTavish Hargrave, Catherine Parr Traill, and others.
Toronto Public Library Digital Archive
Includes a range of digitized primary source materials,
including historical maps, books, and assorted ephemera (postcards, advertisements, flyers,
and tickets).
Anthologies
Canadian Literature in English: Texts and Contexts
The anthology includes important writings by canonical and
non-canonical Canadian authors, published since the sixteenth century to 1920.
PR 9184.3
.S93 2009 v.1
Stacks
The Search for English-Canadian Literature: An Anthology of
Critical Articles from the Nineteenth and Early Twentieth Centuries
Essays, prefaces, and editorials published between 1823 and
1926 in a variety of works including the major literary periodicals of the time.
Among the authors are Thomas D’Arcy McGee, Sara
Jeannette Duncan, Daniel Wilson, Goldwin Smith, G. Mercer Adam, Pelham Edgar, J.D. Robins,
J.D. Logan, and Charles Mair.
PR 9184.6 .S4
Stacks
Early Voices: Portraits of Canada by Women Writers, 1639–
1914
A collection of first-person accounts of women’s
experiences of Canada, representing a multitude of Canadian regions, national origins, and
social classes. Includes writings by Anna Brownell Jameson, Catharine Parr Traill, Emily
Carr as well as lesser known names.
HQ 1453 .E33
2010
Stacks
Bibliographies
Bibliography of Canadiana Published in Great Britain, 1519–
1763
The chronological arrangement of approximately 865 titles and
editions in this comprehensive bibliography of printed works published in Great Britain to
1763 (the Treaty of Paris) includes books, pamphlets, maps, broadsides, and broadsheets which
concern in some way any part of the present area of Canada.
Each entry includes a bibliographic description, a statement
of format, pertinent references to other catalogs or bibliographies, notes about the work,
and locations of known copies in Canadian libraries.
Z 1365 .W34
1990
Reference
A Bibliography of Canadian Imprints, 1751–1800
A bibliography of books, handbills, pamphlets and other
printed materials published in the provinces of Canada, compiled by Marie Tremaine, a
prominent Canadian bibliographer.
In 1999, book-history scholars Patricia Fleming and Sandra
Alston published a supplement
to the bibliography.
Early Canadian Printing: A Supplement to Marie Tremaine’s A
Bibliography of Canadian Imprints, 1751–1800
Corrects the original publication by Tremaine and includes new
content new with updated scholarship. An analytical bibliography of previously unrecorded
eighteenth-century Canadian imprints and a source for the study of early print culture in the
Maritimes, Quebec, and Ontario.
English Canadian Literature to 1900: A Guide to Information
Sources
Provides a list of all the important primary and secondary
sources of this period including: general reference guides; literary histories and
criticisms; anthologies; major and minor authors; literature of exploration, travel and
description, and selected nineteenth-century journals.
Z 1375 .M68
Reference
Canada’s Early Women Writers: Texts in English to 1859
This bibliographical study presents 152 women-authored
English-language texts relating to Canada that were published from 1728 to 1859, including
the works of Frances Brooke, Anna Jameson, Susanna Moodie, and Catherine Parr Traill.
Included are monographas that appeared before 1860, and
personal life-writings (letters, diaries, travel journals) written before 1860 that were
published later.
Z 1376 .W65
G47 1994
Reference
The Republic of Childhood: A Critical Guide to Canadian Children’s Literature in English
A collection of critical essays, which are organized by genres
and topics in Canadian children’s fiction and nonfiction: oral tradition, Inuit and
Indigenous legends, early Canadian children’s books, folktales, fantasy, historical
fiction, the realistic animal story, history and biography, poetry and plays, illustration
and design, picture books and picture storybooks.
Each essay traces the development of the genre or subject and
is accompanied by a list of books, published up to the mid-1970s. Second edition.
PN 1009 .A1
E3 1975
Reference
Biographies
Dictionary of Canadian Biography
The Biography provides authoritative biographical
information about significant figures of Canada’s past who died between the years 1000
and 1930, or whose last known date of activity falls within these years.
There are detailed articles on Canada’s major historical
figures, and short articles on minor personages who have hitherto found no place in reference
works or general histories.
Canadian Writers, 1890–1920
Studies the effects of a post-Confederation nationalism on
literary endeavour in Canada.
Canadian Writers Before 1890
French and English writers who flourished between the
seventeenth century and the 1980s are covered in the bio-critical resource. Writers came from
all walks of life including explorers, missionaries, civil servants, travel writers, lawyers
and journalists.
Canada’s Early Women Writers
Includes biographical and publication information for more
than 470 women who lived in Canada or wrote about Canada, and authored an English-language
book or pamphlet of fiction or poetry that was published before 1940.
History, Literary Interpretation & Criticism
The Cambridge Companion to Canadian Literature
A comprehensive introduction to major writers, genres and
topics in Canadian literature, including exploration and travel writing.
The Cambridge History of Canadian Literature
A complete history of Canadian writing from its beginnings,
including the literature of settlement and the history of Canadian publishing and the literary marketplace in the second half of the nineteenth century.
A History of English-Canadian Literature to the Confederation:
Its Relation to the Literature of Great Britain and the United States
Provides an historical background to the beginnings of
Canadian literature and the emergence of a Canadian nationality.
Home Ground and Foreign Territory: Essays on Early Canadian
Literature
A collection of essays on early Canadian literature in English
by renowned experts in early Canadian literary studies, including D.M.R. Bentley, Mary Jane
Edwards, and Carole Gerson.
Aiming to be both provocative and scholarly, it encompasses a
variety of perspectives, subjects, and methods, with the aim of reassessing the field,
unearthing neglected texts, and proposing new approaches to canonical authors.
Transatlantic Upper Canada: Portraits in Literature, Land, and
British-Indigenous Relations
Examines the writings of Haudenosaunee leaders John Norton and
John Brant and Anishinabeg authors Jane Johnston Schoolcraft, Peter Jones, and George
Copway, as well as European figures John Beverley Robinson, John Strachan, Anna Brownell
Jameson, and Sir Francis Bond Head.
Hutchings argues that, despite their cultural differences,
many factors connected these writers, including shared literary interests, cross-Atlantic
journeys, metropolitan experiences, mutual acquaintance, and engagement in ongoing dialogue
over Indigenous territory and governance.
Emigration, Nation, Vocation: The Literature of English
Emigration to Canada, 1825–1900
Explores English and Canadian fiction and nonfiction and the
manner in which they describe early Canadian settlement. Writers examined in the book include
Frederick Marryat, John Mackie, Elisabeth Strickland, Agnes Strickland, Catharine Parr
Traill, Susanna Moodie, and F.M. Delafosse.
PR 9185.6
.I45 H36 2009
Stacks
Canadian Women in Print, 1750–1918
Historical examination of women’s engagement with
multiple aspects of print over some two hundred years in Canada, from the settlers who wrote
diaries and letters to the New Women who argued for ballots and equal rights.
Literary Culture and Female Authorship in Canada 1760–2000
Six women writers from six different periods and how they
portray Canadian women authors: Frances Brooke, Susanna Moodie, Sara Jeannette Duncan; L.M.
Montgomery, Margaret Atwood, and Carol Shields.
PR 9188 .H35
2003
Stacks
Far off Metal River: Inuit Lands, Settler Stories, and the
Making of the Contemporary Arctic
Explores how Samuel Hearne’s account of the Bloody Falls
massacre has shaped the ongoing colonization and economic exploitation of the North.
reviewed & updated 11 November 2021 | compiled by Agatha Barc, MI