Dictionary of Literary Biography: Canadian Writers Before 1890

Early Canadian writing in European languages primarily takes documentary form. Mission records reporting home to the authorities in France and the writings of explorers who predate Canadian literature were all couched in conventional literary forms--turning mapmaking into invention, experience into strange adventure, and events into moral fables. As a result, the literary bequest to subsequent generations involves romanticism as well as the illusion of documentary authenticity. The blend between these two literary features was form of expression out of which 20th-century Canadian writing would later grow. The writers surveyed in this DLB volume served as the voice for the economic and political aspirations that would turn a collection of trading territories, Indian lands and European colonies into a modern nation-state. 102 Entries include: Levi Adams, Honore Beaugrand, Georges Boucher De Boucherville, Harriet Vaughan Cheney, May Agnes Fleming, Thomas Chandler Haliburton, James MacPherson Le Moine, Thomas D'Arcy McGee, Emily Murphy, Samuel Strickland, William Henry Withrow.