Collecting Canadiana Books - Early Canadiana Literature Online

Buried Antiques: Canadiana Book Collecting
Early Canadiana Literature Online, Rare Book & Used Books for
Canadiana Book Collector.

The story of printing in Canada goes back to 1751, when a New Englander, Bartholomew Green, brought his printing press to Halifax. The Halifax Gazette was the first newspaper to be published in Canada. The first printing to be established in Quebec was not until 1764, which had a late start in contrasts to our Americans who started publishing in 1640.

Newspapers were imported too, English and American. They came not very quickly but seemed to have interested a number of people. The early presses were used to print handbills, forms, pamphlets, and even small books for the local authors. While readers found it difficult to buy books in Canada, there was even less opportunity for authors to have them published here.

By 1815 there were a few private libraries that mainly consisted of classical, religious, and political writings gathered without special regard for edition or other factors important to Canadiana book collecting in this field.

The period from 1800 to 1847 was call the golden age of discovery where sailing ships were searching for the northwest passage in the Artic by Franklin, Ross, Parry, Lyon, Back, Simpson, and Rae. The Sir John Franklin's (1786-1847) Narrative of the journey to the shores of the polar sea, in the years 1819, 20, 21, and 22 (1823); and Narrative of the second expedition to the shores of the polar sea in the years 1825, 1826, and 1827 (1828) were recently sold at auction in 2001 for under $2000 each. Under priced in terms of there true worth in relation to our geographical knowledge of the region and literature of the Artic. George Heriot's Travels through the Canada's (1807) is a rare book and quite valuable piece for Canadiana book collectors.

Colonel Samuel Strickland wrote Twenty-seven Years in Canada West; his sister, Mrs. Moodie, Roughing It in the Bush; and another sister, Catherine Parr Traill's first book, The Backwoods of Canada: Being Letters from the Wife of an Emigrant Officer, Illustrated of the Domestic Economy of British America (1836), and Canadian Wild Flowers, Painted and Lithographed by Agnes FitzGibbon (1868) . In Lower Canada , Francois-Xavier Garneau, stung to the quick by Lord Durham's remark that French Canadians were "a people of no history and no literature" composed his history of Canada, the first considerable work in French-Canadian literature. In poetry, a beginning was made by Charles Heavysege (1816-1876), a Montreal journalist whose Saul ran into three editions; by Charles Sangster (1822-1893), who published two volumes of poems and lyrics; and by D'Arcy McGee and Joseph Howe, both of whom combined poetry with politics and oratory. But there was little in this pre-Confederation literature which the world would not willingly let die; and it was only after Confederation that a Canadian literature, in any real sense arose.

The gold rush brought printing to the West Coast. The Frazer Mines Vindicated, or The History of Four Months (1858), by Alfred Waddington, was sold for fifty cents and only eleven known copies out of 25,000 have survived.

Had you lived in 1859 when the famous painter Paul Kane published his Wandering of an Artist among the Indians of North America from his Toronto studio on King Street could of been purchased for a few pennies are only now in high demand.

Significant episodes in Canadian history have contributed a share of Canadiana book collecting, pamphlets, and broadsides to our store of Canada; the building of the railways, the Riel Rebellion, the formation of the North West Mounted Police, the Klondike gold rush, homesteading on the prairies, and Canada's participation in the two wars has produced an abundance of collectible matters.

It is in poetry that the literary genius of the Canadian people had reached perhaps its highest expression. The years following Confederation saw grow to maturity in Canada a group of native-born poets who would have done credit to any country. The pioneer of this group was Charles Mair (1840-1927), whose Dreamland and Other Poems was published in 1868. Mair was, as we have seen, one of the founders of the "Canada First" party; and many of his verses had a strong nationalist color. His most famous work, a drama in blank verse entitled Tecumseh, derives its inspiration directly from Canadian history. The only other writer of the group who came under the influence of "Canada First" was Charles G. D. Roberts (1860-1943) , some of whose earlier poems are among the finest and most patriotic in the anthology of Canadian verse.

Chief among the members of the Canadian school of nature poetry was Archibald Lampman (1861-1899). A disciple of Wordsworth, he preserved in his poetry a certain universal note; but the nature of which he sang was that of the countryside. Another outstanding figure among the poets of Canadian nature was Bliss Carman (1861-1929). Carman like Roberts, spent much of his time in the United States. Others members of this school have have been Isabella Valancy Crawford (1850-1887), William Campbell (1861-1915), Duncan Campbell Scott (1862-1947), Frederick George Scott, and Pauline Johnson (1862-1913), the latter a poetess of Indian blood. Dr W. H. Drummond (1854-1907) chose the narrow medium of dialect verse to give to the life of French Canada an expression which was universal in its appeal. His Habitant and His Voyageur are merely Every man in a French-Canadian setting. Robert W. Service has sung of the life of the Yukon and the North-West in a style reminiscent of the best work of Rudyard Kipling. Dr. John McCrae (1872-1918) wrote, while on active service, the most notable poem produced by the Great war, in Flanders' Fields. But the high-water mark in Canadian poetry was perhaps reached by Marjorie Pickthall (1883-1922). There is in her verses a magical quality found only in the work of the great masters, such as Keats.

French-Canadian poetry has achieved since Confederation success as great as English Canadian. Joseph Octave Cremazie (1827-1879) . A strong nationalistic note is to be found in much French-Canadian poetry; and the song, O Canada, by Sir Adolphe Routhier (1839-1920), bids fair to become the national anthem, while Sir George Cartier's O Canada! Mon pays, mes amours attained earlier a wide popularity. The ancient folk-songs of French Canada have been revived of late years, and they have contributed an element of color and distinction to French-Canadian literature.

In fiction Canada produced no great names; but many of her novelist and story-writers have gained an international reputation. It was in the field of historical fiction that Canadians first won renown. Ten years after Confederation William Kirby (1817-1906) published The Golden Dog., a romance of the last days of the French regime in Canada; and a quarter of a century after Confederation Sir Gilbert Parker, a native of Canada who wrote his most famous book, The seats of the Mighty, a story of the conquest of Canada. But in has been in the field of animal stories that Canada has made perhaps its most distinctive contributions to imaginative prose literature. Ever since Esop wrote the his Fables, there have been animal stories in which the animals were anthropomorphized and spoke and acted like human beings; but it remained for two Canadians, Ernest Thompson-Seton and Charles G. D. Roberts, to invent a type of story in which animals acted like animals, and did not speak at all. Thompson-Seton wrote Wild Animals I have Known, Lives of the Hunted, and a number of similar books; and Roberts wrote The Heart of the Ancient Wood, The Kindred of The Wild, and The Watchers of the Trails- stories which created a new type of fiction. Mrs. Ewan Macdonald, who writes under her maiden name of L. M. Montgomery has endeared herself to many readers with her Anne of Green Gables- described by Mark Twain as "the sweetest creation of child life yet written'. Marshall Saunders wrote a children's classic in Beautiful Joe. Martha Ostenso, with her Wild Geese, and Mazo de la Roche, with her Jalna, had captured the public ear; Frederick Philip Grove, in his Our Daily Bread, had written a novel which reveals a master's hand. But perhaps the greatest success of all has been achieved by Stephen Leacock (1869-1944), in the field of humorous fiction. Leacock's Sunshine Sketches of a Little Town is a picture of a small town in Ontario; but its appeal is so universal that it might well be a description of a small town anywhere. The one who earned the the title of "the father of American humors' was Thomas Chandler Haliburton (1796-1865). Haliburton, a judge in Nova Scotia, wrote the Clockmaker, or the Sayings and Doings of Sam Slick of Slickville, and a number of other humorous books.

Historical studies in Canada have always been vigorous. Francis Parkman (1823-1893), who first told in classic style the story of New France, was not a Canadian; but his example has exerted a profound influence on Canadian historians. William Canniff (1830-1910) who wrote A History of the early Settlement of Upper Canada, and William Kingford (1818-1898), who complied a ten-volume History of Canada, lacked literacy charm. William Wood, in his The Fight for Canada and George m. wrong, in his Canadian Manor and its seigneurs and The Rise and Fall of New France, have rivaled Parkman in his own field; Agnes Laut, in her conquest of the Great North-West, and L. J. Burpee, in his search for the western Sea, have told the epic of Fur trade and exploration in the west; and Sir John Willison achieved in his Sir Wilfrid Laurier and the Liberal party, a political biography of real distinction. In the work of Canadian historians credit must be given to the work of the Public Archives of Canada, first under Douglas Brymner, and later under A. G. Doughty, as well as to various provincial archives branches, in making available to Canadians a wealth of material regarding the history of their country.

Canadian books written by women who experienced the pioneer way of life are in demand. Upper Canada by Susanna Moodie, Catherine Parr Traill, Anne Langton, and France Stewart are highly collectible. We cannot forget A trip to Manitoba(1880) by Mary Fitzgibbon, A Women's way Through Unknown Labrador (1908), The New North (1910) by Agnes Deans Cameron, A Women in Canada (1910) by Mrs. Cran, and I married the Klondike (1954) by Laura Beatrice Berton

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