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Highways of Canadian Literature provides teachers and students in educational institutions and readers in general with a complete history of the Canadian literature extant in the English language. In very recent years Canadian universities and colleges have added to their curricula systematic study of the verse and prose of the chief writers born in or resident in the Dominion. Also, teachers in Canadian academies and high schools, as occasion affords opportunity, inform their pupils about the lives and work of Canadian authors. Further: as expressive of the new and increasing interest in Canadian Literature, Literary Clubs, Reading Clubs, and Reading Circles have been formed, and constantly are being formed, to promote ‘community’ study of the writings of Canadian men and women of letters.

Hitherto, however, those who wished to be informed on the literary history of Canada and the status of Canadian Literature, had to depend on Anthologies, summary annalistic Sketches, and biographical Compendia. The earlier anthologies comprise verse either chronologically or topically arranged, but some of them contain, in an Appendix, biographical notes on the authors represented in the volumes. The later anthologies, as, for instance, Garvin’s Canadian Poets, contain, besides the ‘selections,’ biographical and critical introductions. These anthologies, though comprehensive, informing and delightful ‘source-books,’ do not, by themselves, disclose the development of Canadian Literature. The annalistic sketches or compendia, on the other hand, are too sketchy, too annalistic. They do not tell the story of the development of Canadian Literature with any attempt at perspective or at disclosing its social and spiritual origins.

There was, therefore, pressing need for a comprehensive Synoptic History of Canadian Literature. Such a work would furnish the teacher, the student, and the general reader with a ‘method’ of reading Canadian Literature with philosophical insight or with historical and critical perspective. It would distinguish certain ‘epochs’ and ‘movements’ in the literary history of Canada, and make clear how Canadian poets and prose writers are related to one another and have influenced one another, and how, gradually, they expressed in literature the slowly emerging consciousness of a national spirit and a national destiny in the Dominion.

That is what Highways of Canadian Literature attempts to do. In scope it is a complete or comprehensive survey of literary ‘epochs’ and ‘movements’ in Canada, beginning with the Puritan Migration from the American Colonies in 1760 and closing at the end of the first quarter of the 20th century. In method it is both historical and critical. It orientates the ‘backgrounds’ of Canadian Literature, traces the social and spiritual origins of that literature, remarks special ‘influences,’ demarcates several ‘epochs’ and ‘movements,’ discusses the importance of outstanding Canadian authors, and supplies critical estimates of Canadian prose and poetry.

It is designed for the use of teachers and students in universities, colleges, academies, seminaries, and high schools, and of general readers. Together with suitable anthologies or selections it will furnish teachers and students with adequate equipment for a systematic study of Canadian Literature, and general readers and members of literary clubs equally adequate equipment for ‘home’ or ‘club’ study of the development of Canadian Literature.

The Chapters on Post-Confederation Fiction (Chapters XVI and XVII—Novelists and Short Story Writers of the First Renaissance and Chapter XXI—Fiction Writers of the Second Renaissance) were written, expressly at my solicitation, by Mr. Donald G. French, whose wide and intimate knowledge of the forms, technics, and history of Canadian fiction is recognized throughout Canada. For many years he has been assiduous, as an essayist and lecturer, in reviewing and promoting the study of Canadian imaginative prose fiction, and his experience of many years as reviewer, and later as literary editor for a book publishing house, has given him special opportunities to study the history and observe the evolution of Canadian imaginative prose. Moreover, since Mr. French is also well versed in the forms, history, and technics of Canadian poetry, and since he has a temperamental patience, which engenders in him the ‘wise passiveness’ essential to the just critic, I engaged for the book as a whole his taste and judgment, in regard to treatment and style, and his knowledge of facts of Canadian literary history. The text of the book is therefore enhanced in treatment and style, as well as in critical justice, by Mr. French’s contribution, and by his critical revision of the whole work.

I wish, here, specially to remark my ideal and aim in writing Highways of Canadian Literature. It is, I believe, the duty of the literary historian and critic to respect his subject and to present it under its most significant and engaging aspects in order that he may win others to equal respect for his subject. Canadian Literature is important at least to Canadians; and, whatever be its comparative aesthetic and artistic dignity, it is an integral part or branch of English Literature. This book will justify itself if it compels Canadians to recognize the importance of their own literature, and wins other peoples to a decent respect for a literature which, while still in its adolescence, shows evidences of attaining to independent and vigorous adult estate—in the event of which Canadian literary creation, taste, and judgment will be based, not on the work of British or of American masters of poetry and imaginative prose, but on that of Canadian masters. Meanwhile, this book aims to disclose to Canadians the social and spiritual importance of their own literature and to determine its place or distinction in English Literature—in short, to promote in Canada and abroad what may aptly be called ‘the higher study’ of Canadian Literature.

To Mr. Newton MacTavish, M.A., Editor of The Canadian Magazine, Mr. R. H. Hathaway, Mr. M. O. Hammond, Dr. Duncan Campbell Scott, Mr. John Murray Gibbon, Mr. S. Morgan-Powell, Literary Editor of The Montreal Star, Mr. John Garvin, B.A., Editor of Canadian Poets, Canadian Poems of the Great War, etc., Dr. Ray Palmer Baker, author of A History of English-Canadian Literature to the Confederation, and Mr. T. G. Marquis, author of English-Canadian Literature, I am indebted for advice, criticism, and much practical aid in preparing the text. To Miss Annie Donohoe, Librarian of the Nova Scotia Legislative Library and Mrs. Mary Kinley Ingraham, M.A., Librarian of Acadia University, I am indebted for assistance in research; and to Miss Laura P. Carten, Editor of The Children’s Page, Halifax Herald, for reading the ‘galley proofs’ of the text. To Colonel William Ernest Thompson, LL.B., Honorary Secretary of the Board of Governors of Dalhousie University, my indebtedness is great and is acknowledged in the Dedication to this book.

J. D. Logan.

Acadia University, Wolfville, N.S.