photo of stacks (lower floor)

Canadian Literature & Poetry
in English

Regional Literature

Encyclopedias, Dictionaries & Handbooks

The Oxford Handbook of Canadian Literature Sugars, Cynthia, editor A comprehensive, authoritative guide to many different genres, topics, and aspects of Canadian literary history, including prairie literature.
The Cambridge Companion to Canadian Literature Kröller, Eva-Marie A comprehensive introduction to major writers, genres and topics in Canadian literature, including regionalism and urbanism.

The North

Strange Things: The Malevolent North in Canadian Literature Atwood, Margaret Focuses on the imaginative mystique of the wilderness of the Canadian North. Writers discussed include Robert Service, Robertson Davies, Alice Munro, E.J. Pratt, Marian Engel, Margaret Laurence and Gwendolyn MacEwan.
Northern Experience and the Myths of Canadian Culture Hulan, Renée An investigation of the idea of the “North” as an element of Canada’s national identity and the development of this theme in Canadian culture and Canadian literature.
Far off Metal River: Inuit Lands, Settler Stories, and the Making of the Contemporary Arctic Cameron, Emilie Explores how Samuel Hearne’s account of the Bloody Falls massacre has shaped the ongoing colonization and economic exploitation of the North.

The Atlantic Provinces

New Brunswick Literary Encyclopedia Tremblay, Tony, and Cabajsky, Andrea, editors Biographical, critical, and bibliographic information about more than 150 New Brunswick writers and literary subjects. Also includes Acadian and Francophone authors.
New Brunswick at the Crossroads: Literary Ferment and Social Change in the East Tremblay, Tony, editor What is the relationship between literature and the society in which it incubates? Are there common political, social, and economic factors that predominate during periods of heightened literary activity? This book considers these questions and explores the relationships between periods of creative ferment in New Brunswick and the socio-cultural conditions of those times.
Writers of Newfoundland and Labrador: Twentieth Century de Leon, Lisa Concise biographies of authors, accopanied by synopses and samples of their published work.
PR 9189.6 .D4 1985 Reference
The Homing Place: Indigenous and Settler Literary Legacies of the Atlantic Bryant, Rachel Bryant explores how colonized and Indigenous environments occupy the same given geographical coordinates even while existing in distinct epistemological worlds through the analysis of a wide range of northeastern texts, including Puritan captivity narratives, Wabanaki wampum belts, and contemporary Innu poetry.
Anne of Tim Hortons: Globalization and the Reshaping of Atlantic-Canadian Literature Wyile, Herb Explores how Atlantic-Canadian writers present a picture of the region that is much more complex and less quaint than the stereotypes through which it is typically viewed: Michael Winter, Lisa Moore, George Elliott Clarke, Rita Joe, Frank Barry, Shaun Comish, and Bernice Morgan, among others.

Quebec

Writing in the Time of Nationalism: From Two Solitudes to Blue Metropolis Leith, Linda Traces the history of Montreal as the literary centre of Quebec and Toronto as the literary centre of English Canada.
Jewish Roots, Canadian Soil: Yiddish Culture in Montreal, 1904– 1945 Margolis, Rebecca Examines the contributions of performers and other artists to the Yiddish theatre and culture in Montreal in the first half of the twentieth century, with consideration to the social landscape of the city.
At Odds in the World: Essays on Jewish-Canadian Women Writers Panofsky, Ruth Examines the contributions of performers and other artists to the Yiddish theatre and culture in Montreal in the first half of the twentieth century, with consideration to the social landscape of the city.
Jacob Isaac Segal (1896–1954): A Montreal Yiddish Poet and His Milieu Anctil, Pierre Segal’s poetic production is referenced, translated and rigorously analyzed, and includes over 100 pages of appendices, shedding light on the artistic, spiritual, cultural and historical importance of his oeuvre.

Ontario

You Can’t Get There from Here: The Past As Present in Small-Town Ontario Fiction Porter, Ryan Focuses on four key Ontario authors—Stephen Leacock, Robertson Davies, Alice Munro, and Jane Urquhart—as well as many secondary authors, examining small-town representations in Canadian literature as sophisticated statements on the effects of modernity in the increasingly urbanized and cosmopolitan provice.
Cultural Identities in Canadian Literature Mauguière, Bénédicte A bilingual collection of essays on the themes of cultural identities and immigrant writing in Canada. The emphasis is upon diversity as essays range in subject matter from Margaret Atwood, Margaret Laurence, and Marie-Claire Blais to Danny Laferrière, Ukranian-Canadian plays, “Franglo-théâtre,” contemporary Acadian and Africadian poetry and the Ontario Protestant novel.
Writing in the Time of Nationalism: From Two Solitudes to Blue Metropolis Leith, Linda Traces the history of Montreal as the literary centre of Quebec and Toronto as the literary centre of English Canada.
Toronto: A Literary Guide Gatenby, Greg
PR9187 .G37 1999 Reference
Imagining Toronto Harris, Amy Lavender Traces Toronto’s literary genealogies from their origins in First-Nations stories to present-day graphic novels and analyzes the portrayal of the city in local literature.

The Prairies

Peel’s Bibliography of the Canadian Prairies to 1953 Peel, Bruce The revised and enlarged the previous, 1973 edition, this bibliography is recognized as finest introduction to the literature of the Canadian Prairies.
The Literary History of Alberta Melnyk, George Volume One, “From Writing-on-Stone to World War II” explores the provincial identity as something distinct from region, nation, empire or world.
Writing Alberta: Building on a Literary Identity Melnyk, George, editor Bio-literary discussions of historical figures, high and critical studies of single texts, including the works of Robert Kroetsch, Sheila Watson, Alice Major, Fred Stenson, David Albahari, and Nestor Dmytrow.
Unnamed Country: The Struggle for a Canadian Prairie Fiction Harrison, Dick This book begins before the first prairie novel and traces the growth of prairie fiction over the last century noting the influence of culture on man’s reaction to the landscape.
Shaping a World Already Made: Landscape and Poetry of the Canadian Prairies Tracie, Carl J. Traci, a cultural geographer, explores how reading poetry influences the way we see the Prairies.
The Black Prairie Archives: An Anthology Vernon, Karina, editor An comprehensive anthology of fiction and nonfiction writings by Black authors from the Prairies, from nineteenthth-century fur traders and pioneers to avant-garde writers of the present day. Includes correspondence, memoirs, excerpts from autobiographies political treatises and writings, photographs, interviews, short stories, poems and other types of writing from Daniel T. Williams, Mildred Jane Lewis Ware, George Washington Slater, Jr. Lawrence Hill, Esi Edugyan, Miranda Martini, and other contributors.
Rewriting the Break Event: Mennonites and Migration in Canadian Literature Miki, Roy Examines the fictionalization of the Mennonite break event (the collapse of the “Mennonite Commonwealth” in the 1920s) through strains of religious, ethnic, trauma, and meta-narratives.
The Prairie Journal of Canadian Literature vol. 1 (1983)–present An important regional outlet that publishes poetry, short fiction, drama, literary criticism, reviews, bibliography, interviews, profiles and artwork. Selected works are available on the journal’s web site.

British Columbia

The Vancouver Stories: West Coast Fiction from Canada’s Best Writers Coupland, Douglas, compiler The stories in this collection take place in Vancouver and are written by Pauline Johnson, Emily Carr, Alice Munro, Ethel Wilson and Malcolm Lowry, William Gibson, Timothy Taylor, Zsuzsi Gartner, and Madeline Thien.

reviewed & updated 26 May 2021 | compiled by Agatha Barc, MI