Are people today making the most of their reading opportunities?
Dr. Johnson, the Titan of 18th century English literature, disposed of non-readers in a single scathing sentence: “Those who do not read can have nothing to think, and little to say.”
This judgment seems harsh today, and perhaps it would be more accurate to say that for those who read life is richer, more prosperous, and altogether more enjoyable…a belief which thousands of Canadians hold.
No statistics are available as to the exact number of books sold last year in Canada, but the general picture of mounting sales and larger editions is an indication that reading is becoming increasingly a habit in this country.
Why do people read? What are they reading? And what do they hope to find? The four main reasons are: to increase general learning; to add to knowledge of a specific subject; to impress others (a lesser reason, but still a motivating one); or for pleasure.
Whatever the reason may be, in reading books people find a magic carpet that can transport them to new fields of adventure, science, history, business achievement and romance.
Reading matter was scarce and expensive in the days of our ancestors; today books are plentiful and cheap. If you ordered a copy of Hugh MacLennan’s Two Solitudes printed in Babylonian style on clay bricks, trucks would drive up to your door with about 2,000 bricks, enough to build a wall 10 feet high and 70 feet long. Instead, you may sit down with its 370 pages bound in a cover 8 inches by 5 inches, weighing only a fraction over 20 ounces.
Book Clubs and Best Sellers
That more and more people in this age are spending their leisure time in reading is shown not only by mounting sales and many editions, but by steadily increasing library circulation and wide distribution by the book clubs.
The battle of the book clubs has been going on for some years; in fact, almost since 1926, the year Harry Scherman, a Canadian by birth, started the Book-of-the-Month Club and thus initiated a whole new system of distributing literature. There have been many debates about the advantages and disadvantages of the book-a-month system. Whether the clubs, and there are many of them today, catering to all types of reader, have raised or lowered the reading tastes of the public, whether the choices are based on literary merit or on some more spectacular aspects; whether peoples’ tastes are being formed for them – and not in the best way; the fact remains that more people are reading more books – and books they probably would not have read if it were not for the wide coverage of the clubs.
In Canada and in the United States, with our vast distances between communities, many of us are far from a book store or a library. Even in towns of several thousand population the only reading material may be a small and dusty stock of reprint fiction, mixed in with toothbrushes, chocolate bars and carpet tacks. For many people, the book clubs fill an important place in their cultural lives, in spite of critical comment.
There are raised eyebrows over “best sellers” too. The phrase “best seller” strikes no new note today; it is a part of our everyday speech. But it is little more than fifty years ago, that Harry Thurston Peck, then editor of the literary magazine The Bookman, picked the first best seller list in America. The early lists were random affairs, simply published in the magazine as sketchy reports came from a few dealers. Then, as popular interest grew, the lists were extended to include more and more stores. Today they give a comprehensive picture of what people are reading all over this continent.
The movies, thousands of dollars in prize contests, the book clubs and shrewd publicity have all done their share in blowing up the best seller to larger than life size. But it is undeniable that best sellers are still achieved only through public approval. Whether a book gives peace of mind in troubled times, vicarious adventure, romance, or information, if enough people want to read it, it will inevitably end up in the best seller class.
Besides the sky-rocket type of temporary best seller, there is another kind – the “cumulative” best seller, that keeps on adding readers and buyers over the years, and there are more of these than of the passing fad big sellers. This group is composed mainly of classics – Jonathan Swift’s Gulliver’s Travels, Defoe’s Robinson Crusoe, Dickens’ Oliver Twist, and of course, Shakespeare, in whose works there is a never-dying interest.
Ruskin divided books into two classes: “the books of the hour, and the books of all time.” Into this latter category must go the perennial best seller, one of what we have called the cumulative type, the Bible. In Golden Multitudes, Frank Luther Mott estimates a total sale of 200,000,000 copies, and says “it is probable that there was never a year in American history in which the Bible did not excel the next-best seller.”
The Great Books
In 1887 Sir John Lubbock wrote a refreshing little book called The Pleasures of Life, in which he started the interesting pastime of making book lists, with his selection of “100 Best Books.”
It has been said jokingly that the great books are those that everyone recommends and nobody reads or those everyone says he intends to read and never does. Nevertheless, as Professor Mortimer J. Adler tells us in How To Read a Book, it is mainly the classics that are most widely read. Gone With the Wind, which, in the dozen years after its publication had sold 3,579,000 copies in the English edition, and 1,250,000 copies in foreign languages, has had relatively few readers as compared to the plays of Shakespeare.
Some people think the great books are too heavy and too difficult to be readable, and as a result never attempt them. If they did not shy away from the very names of Plato, Milton, Montaigne and Tolstoi, they would find that these and many other writers are popular, not pedantic. They wrote for men, not for professors. They concerned themselves with problems of their times, but their conclusions are just as applicable to living today. The fundamental human problems have not changed – men are still concerned with happiness, success, truth and justice.
The great books may be read with pleasure at different levels of understanding. For example the child reading Gulliver’s Travels, or Robinson Crusoe does so with a surface enjoyment of the story, while an adult mind can appreciate the significance and satire.
In latter years there has been much talk of “escape” literature, a term generally used in a deprecating way by readers and reviewers alike. Is escapism such a crime? Does not all general reading qualify in some respects as escapism, whether it is light romantic fiction, or a popular scientific disquisition? If it affords the reader an outlet from the routine of life and from everyday worries, then it may be called escape reading, and let no one be ashamed of it.
Reading as a pastime is unique in that it requires no expensive equipment, no partners, no physical endurance, and it offers something for everyone, whether interested in modern poetry or ancient philosophy, art or atomic energy. For those who want to dip very lightly into learning, there are the anthologies, a small number of good ones overwhelmed by a large number of others. Anthologies often lull the unsuspecting reader into a false sense of familiarity with great writers; it is well to remember that even a good anthology is but a skimming of literature, merely a sip to tell the reader whether he likes a writer well enough to drink deeply.
Canadian Literature
In all the great wealth of literature, what part does Canada play? According to William Arthur Deacon, then president of the Canadian Authors Association, in an address last November, “with unimportant exceptions, every important Canadian book has been written within the past 70 years, the great majority within the past 25 years. A single year’s production now outweighs, in volume and merit, that of any decade before 1920.”
Canada rose to new prominence during the Second World War, and Canadians gained confidence in themselves in all fields, .including that of literature. In the years since 1942, the problem has been to find enough good books by Canadians to meet the demand of the public, and to produce enough copies to fill orders; whereas 25 years ago, not 2 per cent of the books bought by Canadians were written by Canadians, Mr. Deacon reports.
Canada is now producing 100 works of general literature annually, including some of international importance. Sometimes Canadian books outsell imports in the home market. An example of this is The Owl Pen by Kenneth McNeill Wells. This story of his experiences as a newspaperman who turned small farmer led the sale of non-fiction in Canada for four consecutive months.
Canadian literature, says Mr. Deacon, “has commenced to express the soul of a people just awakened to the fact that it has a soul to express – a distinct and unique soul – and that it must solve its own problems on its own terms.”
Though Canadian literature is in its infancy, the child is a healthy one and shows great promise. It does not challenge the much older literature of Europe, but for a country of Canada’s population the advance is outstanding.
Writers here get very little help from anyone. The Governor-General’s Annual Literary Awards bring honour to the winners, but no cash reward. Apart from the David Awards in Quebec, no Dominion or Provincial government gives Canadian writers anything at all. There are no fellowships, no grants, nor even much encouragement. The Canadian Authors Association, kept alive for the past 27 years by the voluntary work of members, could do a great deal to foster writing and spread a love of Canadian literature if it were adequately supported. It offers an opportunity to someone who would like to become a patron of the Arts.
For many years Canadian writers have been climbing a long uphill path to recognition, and in some cases to fame. In 1927, when Mazo de la Roché won the
$10,000 Atlantic Monthly Prize with her novel Jalna, the achievement was so sensational for a Canadian Writer that the city of Toronto gave her a public banquet. In later years, honours were more usual. The first edition of Franklin Davey McDowell’s The Champlain Road ran out in two weeks with one day’s sales reaching nearly 700 copies. Gwethalyn Graham’s Earth and High Heaven is circulating in 10 languages other than English. Gabrielle Roy, a native of St. Boniface, Manitoba, was elected a member of the Royal Society of Canada, and her novel The Tin Flute, won the Prix Femina Vie Heureuse (Paris) for the year’s most distinguished novel by a woman. Bruce Hutchison s The Unknown Country and Hugh MacLennan s Two Solitudes entered best-sellerdom at home and received acclaim abroad.
Perhaps one of the best known and best loved characters in Canadian fiction is Anne of Green Gables. The first book of this series by Mrs. L. M. Montgomery, a native of Prince Edward Island, was published by L. C. Page and Company of Boston in 1908, and immediately began a long career of popularity not only among the teen-age girls it was written for but among their elders. Mark Twain said that Anne was “the dearest and most moving and delightful child since Alice in Wonderland”, and many thousands have agreed with him. In a recent study made in the children’s section of the St. Paul, Minnesota, Public Library, Anne of Green Gables ranked 1lth in a list of 100 all-time favourites picked by children themselves.
It may seem mundane to drag the matter of dollars and cents into the sacred halls of literature, but besides the prestige that Canadian writers win for Canada they also bring in handsome sums of United States dollars. Unlike other exporters, they do not have to send away our physical resources. Mr. Deacon points out that Canada has three novelists each of whom has taken in one-quarter of a million dollars from a single book, and he tells us that the more successful Canadian writers derive 75 per cent to 80 per cent of their income from the American market. A sore point with Canadian writers is that a 4 per cent surtax is charged on book royalties as “unearned income”.
Publishing in Canada
Considering that books have been published commercially in Canada for fewer than 100 years, and that only within the past 30 years has publishing developed into an important industry, with most of the growth taking place during the past 10 years, Canada’s record is one to be proud of.
Canadian publishers have done much to encourage and develop Canadian literature. Before 1914, the majority of all books sold in this country were imported. Canadian publishing did not exceed 15 per cent of the total. Today, since our small population does not warrant large editions for the Canadian market alone, the usual practice is for publishers to put out their own Canadian books as well as English and American titles originally published by firms they represent.
French-language writers
In the field of French-Canadian literature great advances have been made. Mason Wade, in French Canadian Outlook, published in 1946, says that until recently most French-Canadian books were devoted to “glorifying the good old days of the French regime, and the obsolescent, patriarchal, rural world, untouched by alien influences.” This, he says, was inevitable, as their authors were the privileged é1ite. The revolution in French-Canadian literature is shown in Ringuet’s Thirty Acres, a realistic, not romantic, picture of rural life, and in Roger Lemelin’s The Town Below, a satire of city life and industrial workers. The latter won for the young author the French Academy’s French-Language Prize, the David Award, and a Guggenheim Fellowship.
Mr. Wade compares the present literature of French Canada with that of American literature in the 1840’s and 1850’s, when American writers ceased imitating the English, and began writing books that were their own in theme, treatment and style. Canadians of the new generation who write in the French language are making an effort to throw off the bonds of traditionalism and to produce a literature which is essentially Canadian.
After the fall of France in 1940, Montreal became the centre of world trade in French-language books. An export market was immediately open, for, with the occupation of France and Belgium by the Nazis, the French reading public of the world was cut off from its chief source of supply. According to a bulletin issued by the Department of External Affairs, before the end of the war Canadian publishers were exporting French-language publications to 35 countries.
What to Read
In his address at the Autumn Convocation at Queen’s University in 1947 Dr. W. E. McNeill quoted a Report by Sir William Fyfe, Principal of Aberdeen and Chairman of the Advisory Council on Education in Scotland: “To fail in mathematics or Latin is to be deficient in these subjects; to fail in English is to be fundamentally uneducated.”
Education is within reach of those who have the gumption to get it. It is to be found in books in public libraries, in pamphlets and magazines, and in the library, large or small, which every family should have.
As to what to read, there may be as many answers as there are persons and situations, but no reading that gives background information is lost. Dick Freeman started by reading a dictionary from cover to cover, and ended up as “Edgar Wallace”, author of best-selling detective stories. John Wanamaker read the dictionary of evenings, and became a great storekeeper millionaire: Daniel Webster read the dictionary and became the leading orator of his age; William Pitt, Earl of Chatham, read a dictionary through twice.
It may not be universally good advice to read the dictionary: as Bill Nye said, “it hasn’t much plot, but the author’s vocabulary is wonderfuL” The point is that when men can tackle such reading and profit by it there is no excuse for not reading many lighter volumes.
If you want to make the most of reading, whether of great books or modern educational books, build a plan. The story is told by Dr. Donald A. Laird in The Technique of Getting Things Done of how Edison read straight through 15 feet of books before a librarian put him on the right path. Young Edison had started at one end of a public library shelf and worked his way along, book by book. After being shown how to plot his course through literature, he became one of the best informed scientists of his time.
Books For Young People
The tastes of most people in literature, as in other things, set fairly early in life, and in essentials do not alter. In youth, the tastes are more catholic, and minds are more receptive to new ideas and new forms. It is well worth conscious effort to maintain this attitude in later years, for the results are many, and often unexpected. On a first meeting with modern poetry, for instance, some people may dismiss it in bewilderment; but put previous prejudices away and try again, and you may feel as uplifted as Keats’ “watcher of the skies, when a new planet swims into his ken”.
Because reading tastes are moulded in early life, much care should be taken to see that children are exposed to good books. In a brief issued this year the Canadian Welfare Council remarked that reading facilities in Canada for young people are inadequate in most places. Libraries have little money to spend, and, as the brief states, “in 1942, only 39 libraries in all of Canada reported to the Dominion Bureau of Statistics that they had any co-operative relations with youth organizations.”
The Council went on to recommend the expenditure of larger amounts of money by municipal, county, provincial and federal governmental bodies, and said: “we must continue to make more interesting and attractive the libraries and other centres from which books are obtained. Young people must be assisted and guided in the development of the ‘library habit’.”
On Having Your Own Books
To supplement the public library, for pure enjoyment and the pride of possessing books, building a library is a great satisfaction. In these inflated times, even the most eager reader cannot echo Erasmus when he said: “When I get a little money, I buy books; and if any is left, I buy food and clothes.” But the building of a small and useful library can start in a very modest way.
Popular reprint editions of classics in fiction and non-fiction, economics, history and philosophy are available for small sums. The Department of Agriculture in Ottawa willingly supplies literature useful to farmers, and other Dominion and Provincial government departments issue many booklets on a variety of subjects free or for a few cents. Many industries issue well-written pamphlets, free from advertising, on some form of Canadian life, as for example Northern Electric Company’s Forward With Canada. Even in the most remote rural areas, the mail-order catalogue need not be the only reading material available.
It is a good idea to buy books carefully selected to do what you want them to do. The very presence of a well-chosen shelf of books is elevating to the spirit, and the handiness of books will make it easy to fill in an evening, or a half-hour before bed, or a quarter-hour while waiting for dinner, or five minutes waiting for a favourite radio programme. It is amazing how short periods of reading the right things add up to worthwhile educational achievement.
Pocket-sized books can give city workers a good background of reading in a year. Take an average of 30 minutes in street car or train (many commuters to Toronto and Montreal spend as long as 1� hours in travel twice daily), and it means the equivalent, even with a fortnight vacation, of 37 eight-hour days of reading. Much can be done with that, whether you like to read Shakespeare or Dale Carnegie, The Origin of Species, or Swinburne.
In fact – to quote Dr. Laird again – “I am too busy to read” is the alibi of those who cultivate their own illiteracy and keep behind the stream of progress.
What should your goal be? Well, it might be to give yourself the equivalent in background of a university curriculum, or to promote your business interests, or to be ready to write books upon your retirement, or to be prepared to sit behind a massive desk ten years from now, and hold up your end with men who didn’t have to try nearly so hard for the knowledge you have gained for yourself.
To those who know the pleasures and uses of reading, hours alone are never lonely, and conversation with others need not be idle or empty. Christopher Morley strikes a happy note in Parnassus on Wheels: “When you sell a man a book you don’t sell him just twelve ounces of paper and ink and glue – you sell him a whole new life. Love and friendship and humor and ships at sea by night – there’s all heaven and earth in a book, a real book, I mean”.
Canadian Books of the Year
With the thought of providing the makings of a reading list, and at the same time showing readers of this Monthly Letter the variety and quality of literature of Canadian origin, we asked the 23 English-language publishers and 18 French-language publishers of whom we could find trace in Canada to tell what books they had published-in the past twelve months and those (marked *) planned for Autumn publication. English language publishers are listed on page 2.
We have not attempted to list school text-books, except a few of general reading interest. Many technical and educational books are published by The McGraw-Hill Company of Canada Ltd. and by Sir Isaac Pitman & Sons Ltd. Nor could we attempt to include reprints, though many excellent books are constantly appearing in new printings.
For great kindness in collating lists we are indebted to Mrs. Olive Knox, National Convenor for Canadian Book Week, whose novel Red River Shadows appears below, and to Mlle Marguerite Brosseau, Chief of the Cataloguing Department of the Bibliothèque Municipale of Montreal.
| FICTION | |
| The Precipice | Hugh MacLennan (d) |
| Joe Lavally and the Paleface | Bernard Wicksteed (d) |
| Serpent’s Tooth | Isabelle Hughes (d) |
| Fresh Winds Blowing | Grace Campbell (d) |
| The Aging Nymph | A.J. Elliott (d) |
| The Robber | Bertram Brooker (d) |
| The Flaming Hour | E.A. McCourt (l) |
| Boss of the River | Felix-Antoine Savard (l) |
| Judgment Glen | Will R. Bird (L) |
| Great Waters | Norman Tucker (l) |
| To Effect an Arrest | Harwood Steele (l) |
| Music at the Close | E.A. McCourt (l) |
| The Village of Souls | Philip Child (l) |
| *Flaming Fur Lands | S.A. White (l) |
| Red River Shadows | Olive E. Knox (g) |
| *Philip & Mary | Mazo de la Roche (g) |
| Canadian Summer | Hilda van Stockum (g) |
| A Country Lover | Helen Guiton (e) |
| The Evening Heron | Philip Freund (n) |
| Stephanie’s Son | Philip Freund (n) |
| Truthfully Yours | Angeline Hango (i) |
| Sarah Binks | Paul G. Hiebert (i) |
| In Due Season | Christine van der Mark (i) |
| The Road South | Roderick S. Kennedy (b) |
| It’s All in the Family | Margaret Millar (k) |
| Deep Doorways | Dorothy Dumbrille (a) |
| Shreds of Circumstance | Madge Macbeth (m) |
| The Highland Heart in Nova Scotia | Neil MacNeil (m) |
| The Town Below | Roger Lemelin (h) |
| BIOGRAPHY AND MEMOIRS | |
| This Was My Choice | Igor Gouzenko (e) |
| The Owl Pen | Kenneth McNeill Wells (e) |
| John W. Dafoe | G.V. Ferguson (l) |
| Life of W. H. G. Kingston | M.R. Kingsford (l) |
| Green Fields Afar | Clara & J. E. Middleton (l) |
| The Pickersgill Letters | Edited by G. H. Ford (l) |
| The Diary of Our Own Pepys | Edited by I. Norman Smith (l) |
| Pauline Johnson and Her Friends | Walter McRaye (l) |
| Matthew Arnold | E.K. Brown (l) |
| Walter J. Phillips | Duncan Campbell Scott (l) |
| Edwin J. Pratt | H. W. Wells & Carl F. Klinck (l) |
| Sir Frederick Banting | Lloyd Stevenson (l) |
| William Bell: A Man Austere | Isabel Skelton (l) |
| The Making of a Canadian: J. F. B. Livesay | Edited by Florence Livesay (l) |
| Leading Canadian Poets | Edited by Dr. W. P. Percival (l) |
| When the Steel Went Through | P. Turner Bone (g) |
| The Talking Wire | O.J. Stevenson (g) |
| Egerton Ryerson | C.B. Sissons (c) |
| A Study of Goethe | Barker Fairley (i) |
| The Wit and Wisdom of Whitehead | A.H. Johnson (m) |
| POETRY | |
| No Man an Island | George Whalley (c) |
| *Poems of Christian Experience | Very Rev. G. C. Pidgeon (c) |
| The Wounded Prince and Other Poems | Douglas Le Pan (c) |
| Tancred: Prince of Salerno | Laurence Dakin (e) |
| The Strait of Anian | Earle Birney (l) |
| Poems for People | Dorothy Livesay (l) |
| Figure in the Rain | Genevieve Bartole (l) |
| The Collected Poems of Arthur S. Bourinot | (l) |
| Beggar’s Velvet | Ethel Kirk Grayson (l) |
| Midwinter Thaw | Lenore Pratt (l) |
| Behind the Log | E.J. Pratt (g) |
| The Ill-Tempered Lover and Other Poems | L.A. MacKay (g) |
| Modern Poems for Modern Youth | Edited by Dr. W. P. Percival (f) |
| AFFAIRS | |
| This New Canada | Margaret McWilliams (e) |
| On Being Canadian | Rt. Hon. Vincent Massey (e) |
| Putting Your Dollars to Work | Ronald McEachern (i) |
| The Function of the University | R. S. K. Seeley (i) |
| Canada | Edgar Mclnnis (c) |
| The Canadian Pageant | G.J. Reeve & R. O. MacFarlane (c) |
| World Security by Conference | W. A. Riddell (l) |
| Canada & The Pan American System | F.H. Soward & A. M. Macaulay (l) |
| Youth Speaks Its Mind | Blodwen Davies (l) |
| Homes for Canadians | Lillian D. Millar (l) |
| Canada in a New World | Edited by Eugene Forsey (l) |
| Trade Unions in Canada | Harold A. Logan (g) |
| Three Centuries of Canadian Nursing | J. Murray Gibbon & M. Mathewson (g) |
| Life is for Living | Dr. D. Ewen Cameron (g) |
| The Canadian Economy in Transition | J.D. Gibson (ed.) (g) |
| Corporation Finance | C.A. Ashley (g) |
| The Theory of Economic Change | B.S. Kierstead (g) |
| Industry and Humanity | Rt. Hon. Wm. Lyon Mackenzie King (g) |
| English Merchant Shipping | Dorothy Burwash (o) |
| Readings in British Government | Elisabeth Wallace (o) |
| Canadian Japanese and World War II | Forrest E. La Violette (o) |
| Church and Sect in Canada | S. Delbert Clark (o) |
| The Values of Life | E.J. Urwick (o) |
| Social Approach to Economics | H. A. Logan & M. K. Inman (o) |
| General Middleton’s Account of the Riel Rebellion 1885 | Edited, with introduction by G. H. Needler (o) |
| Half-Hours with Great Scientists | Charles G. Fraser (o) |
| The Government of Canada | R. MacG. Dawson (o) |
| EXPLORATION AND TRAVEL | |
| The Great Mackenzie: In Word and Photo | Raymond Arthur Davies (l) |
| The Northland: Ontario | O.T.G. Williamson (l) |
| Alaska Beckons | Marius Barbeau (g) |
| Hill-Top Tales | Dan McCowan (g) |
| And All Your Beauty | W.R. Watson (g) |
| Canada Moves North | Richard Finnie (g) |
| WAR | |
| Sailor Remember | W.H. Pugsley (d) |
| Haida | William Sclater (i) |
| MISCELLANEOUS | |
| The Pure Celestial Fire | Randolph Carleton Chalmers (l) |
| Youth, Marriage & The Family | Canadian Youth Commission (l) |
| Youth Speaks Out On Citizenship | Canadian Youth Commission (l) |
| Baptists in the Protestant Tradition | Maitland M. Lappin (l) |
| Skills for Living | S.R. Laycock (l) |
| *J. W. Beatty | Dorothy Hoover (l) |
| Economics and Life | H.D. Chataway (l) |
| *Schooner Bluenose | Andrew Merkel & W. R. MacAskill (l) |
| Cornelius Kreighoff | Marius Barbeau (l) |
| *The History of the Canadian Press | M.E. Nichols (l) |
| The King Nobody Wanted | Norman F. Langford (l) |
| Sense and Nonsense | Eric Patrick Nicol (l) |
| Personality and Its Deviations | G. H. Stevenson & L. E. Neal (l) |
| The Passing Show | Rex Frost (l) |
| Men in Sheepskin Coats | Vera Lysenko (l) |
| The Chancel: Before and After | W. M. Birks (l) |
| Canadian Cook Book (revised) | Nellie Lyie Pattinson (l) |
| Psychology, Normal and Abnormal | Dr. J. W. Bridges (j) |
| Principles of Industrial Management | Prof. E. A. Allcut (j) |
| *No Coward’s Soul | Rev. David A. MacLennan, D.D. (c) |
| *Science, Humanism and | |
| Christian Education | Horace Speakman (c) |
| *Introducing the Insect | Frederick A. Urquhart and E. B. Shelley Logier (c) |
| The Diary of Samuel Marchbanks | Robertson Davies (c) |
| Spiritism | G.H. Estabrooks (n) |
| Two and Two | P.C. Armstrong (e) |
| The Men of the Mounted | Nora Kelly (e) |
| The Autobiography of a Nobody | N.B. James (e) |
| One Thing After Another | Charles B. Pyper (e) |
| A Play on Words (radio plays) | Lister Sinclair (e) |
| With One Voice | E.C. Woodley (e) |
| In Pastures Green | Peter McArthur (e) |
| The Canoe and You | Ronald H. Perry, M.A. (e) |
| Charters of Our Freedom | Dr. Reginald G. Trotter (f) |
| Canada and Her Neighbours | Taylor, Seiveright and Lloyd (f) |
| Better Speeches for All Occasions | C.W. Wright (b) |
| Fortress North | E. Jacoby Walker (a) |
| Thunder in the Mountains | Hilda Mary Hooke (i) |
| She Skated Into Our Hearts | Cay Moore (h) |
| Tales of the Sea | Archibald MacMechan (h) |
| The Wedding Gift & Other Stories | Thomas Raddall (h) |
| The Varsity Story | Morley Callaghan (g) |
| 100 to Dinner | Middleton, Ransom & Vierin (o) |
| The Wrath of Homer | L.A. MacKay (o) |
| Of Irony Especially in Drama | G.G. Sedgwick (o) |
| JUVENILES | |
| The Pompous Parrot | Daphne Taylor (g) |
| Men of Valour | Mabel Tinkiss Good (g) |
| Golden North | Maria McPhedran (g) |
| Saltwater Summer | Roderick L. Haig-Brown (d) |
| *Teddy Dappy and Joe | Hugh Weatherby (l) |
THE PUBLISHERS
(a) Thomas Allen Ltd.
(b) Ambassador Books Ltd.
(c) Clarke, Irwin & Co. Ltd.
(d) Wm. Collins & Co. Canada Ltd.
(e) J. M. Dent & Sons (Canada) Ltd.
(f) Ginn and Company
(g) The Macmillan Company of Canada
(h) McClelland & Stewart Ltd.
(i) Oxford University Press
(j) Sir Isaac Pitman & Sons Canada Ltd.
(k) Random House of Canada
(l) The Ryerson Press
(m) S. J. Reginald Saunders & Co. Ltd.
(n) Smithers & Bonellie
(o) University of Toronto Press
Ouvrages publiés de 1947-1948 par des auteurs Canadiens-Français.
Albert (R. P. A.-G.) o.p. Un mystère d’amour et de souffrance… Ottawa-Montréal, Éd. du Lévrier, 1947, 219p.
Allaite (Maurice) Le Mexique, pays de contrastes. Montréal, Éd. Lumen, 1947, 197p.
Allard (Jeanne Grisé, Mme) Mystères. Montréal, l’Auteur, 1947, 172p.
Archives (Les) de folklore III, Montréal, Fides, 1947, 203p.
Baillargeon (Jacqueline Mabit, Mme Pierre) Les hommes ont passé. Montréal, Fides, 1947.
Baillargeon (Pierre) Commerce. Montréal, Éd. Variétés, 1947, 185p.
La neige et le feu. Montréal, Éd. Variétés, 1947, 208 p.
Barbeau (Marius) Grand’mère raconte. Toronto, Longmans, Green and Co., 1947, 105p.
Biron (Hervé) Grandeurs et misères de l’Eglise trifluvienne (1615-1947). Les Trois-Rivières, Éd. trifluviennes, 1947, 246p.
Nuages sur les brûlés. Montréal, Éd. Fernand Pilon, 1948.
Blanchet (Jacques) Essai sur la reliure et les relieurs au XXe siècle. Montréal, l’Auteur, 1947, 122p.
Boisseau (Abbé Lionel) Lourdes nous parle. Montréal, Éd. Lumen, 1947, 196p.
Bourgouin (Louis) Savants modernes. Montréal, Éd. de l’Arbre, 1947, 367p.
Brault (Adrien) De Rome à Montréal par le chemin le plus long. Montréal, Fides, 1948.
Brosseau (R. P. J.-D.) o.p. Influence du Christ dans l’Église d’après Saint Thomas… Ottawa-Montréal, Éd. du Lévrier, 1947, 108p.
Bruchési (Jean) Évocations. Montréal, Éd. Lumen, 1947, 213p.
Cahiers (Les) des Dix no 12, Montréal, Les Dix, 1947, 282p.
Charbonneau (Robert) La France et nous. Montréal, Éd. de l’Arbre, 1947, 77p.
Les désirs et les jours. Montréal, Éd. de l’Arbre, 1948.
Chartier (Mgr Émile) Poésie grecque. Montréal, Éd. Lumen, 1947.
Chicoine (René) Circuit 29. Montréal, Éd. Variétés, 1948, 267p.
Choquette (Adrienne) La coupe vide. Montréal, Éd. Fernand Pilon, 1948.
Clément (Béatrice) Saint Jean Bosco. Montréal, Granger, 1947, 142p.
Coderre (Émile) voir Jean Narrache.
Corps mystique et action catholique. Montréal, Fides, 1947, 147p.
Delorme (Jean) Carrières industrielles. Montréal, Fides, 1947, 175p.
Désilets (R.P. Maurice) c.s.v. Fugues lyriques. Montréal, Libr. des Clercs de St. Viateur, 1947, 221p.
Desprès (Jean-Pierre) Le Canada et l’organisation internationale du travail. Montréal, Fides, 1947, 273p.
Le mouvement ouvrier canadien. Montréal, Fides, 1947, 205p.
Desrosiers (Léo-Paul) Iroquoisie v.1, Montréal, Les Études de l’Institut d’histoire de L’Amérique française, 1947.
Duhamel (Roger) Les cinq grands. Montréal, Éd. Fernand Pilon, 1947, 238p.
Littérature v.1, Montréal, Éd. Fernand Pilon, 1948.
Les moralistes français. Montréal, Éd. Lumen, 1947, 194p.
Durand (Charles-A.) Comment prévenir la carie dentaire. Montréal, l’Auteur, 1947, 152p.
Ellis (Madeleine-B.) Robert Charbonneau et la création romanesque. Montréal, Éd. du Lévrier 1948.
Girard (R.P. René) s.j. Les neuf symphonies de Beethoven… Montréal, Fides, 1948, 173p.
Grandbois (Alain) Rivages de l’homme. Montréal, Éd. Servir. 1948.
Grandpré (Pierre de) Marie Louise des Champs. Montréal, Fides, 1948.
Grenier (Hélène), La musique symphonique de Monteverde à Beethoven. Montréal, Éd. Variétés 1947, 213p.
Guèvremont (Germaine) Marie-Didace, Montréal, Éd. Beauchemin, 1947.
Harpe (Charles-E.) Le jongleur aux étoiles. Montréal, Éd. Marquis, 1947, 187p.
Hébert (Maurice), Autour des trois Amériques. Montréal, Fides, 1948.
Heure (L’) dominicale. Montréal, Éd. Lumen, 1947, 222p.
Jasmin (Damien) Les Témoins de Jéhovah, Montréal, Éd. Lumen, 1947, 189p.
Jean Narrache, pseud. Bonjour les gars. Montréal, Éd. Fernand. Pilon, 1948.
Ladurantaye (Michel de) Sainte Thérèse de Lisieux et l’histoire de son ame. Montréal, s. éd 1947, 155p.
Lanctôt (Gustave), Jacques Cartier devant l’histoire. Montréal, Éd. Lumen, 1947, 188p.
Lasnier (Rina) Le chant de la montée. Montréal, Beauchemin, 1947.
Leclerc (Félix) Pieds nus dans l’aube, Montréal, Fides, 1947, 242p.
Legault (R.P. André) c.s.c. Le Père Moreau (1799-1873). Montréal, Fides, 1947, 188p.
Legault (Rolland), Le chien noir. Légendes de chez nous. Montréal, Éd. Lumen, 1947, 154p.
Longpré (Lyse) Le destin s’amuse. Montréal, Fides, 1948.
Mabit (Jacqueline) voir Baillargeon (Jacqueline Mabit, Mme Pierre).
Martigny (Paul de) Les mémoires d’un garnement. Montréal, Éd. du Lévrier, 1947, 205p.
Maurault (Mgr Olivier) p.s.s. Par voies et par chemins de l’air. (Les Amériques), Montréal, Éd. des Dix, 1947, 271p.
Marylene – Papillons noirs. Montréal, Éd. Serge Brousseau: 1947, 90p.
Nadeau (R.P. Eugène) o.m.i. La perle au fond du gouffre, � Zam-Zam et barbelés �. Montréal, Fides, 1947, 306p.
Pacreau (Camille) Tadoussac. Montmagny, Éd. Marquis, 1947, 139p.
Panneton (Dr. Philippe) voir Ringuet.
Piché (Alphonse) Remous. Poèmes. Montréal, Éd. Fernand Pilon, 1947, 189p.
Picher (R.P. René) o.p. Celle qui ne trompe pas. Montréal, Éd. du Lévrier, 1947, 189p.
Richard (Jean-Jules) Neuf jours de haine. Montréal, Éd. de l’Arbre, 1948.
Ringuet, pseud. Fausse monnaie. Montréal, Éd. Variétés, 1947, 236p.
Roy (C.-E.) Percé: sa nature, son histoire. Percé, l’Auteur, 1948, 178p.
Rumilly (Robert), L’autonomie provinciale. Montréal, Éd. de l’Arbre, 1948, 302p.
Histoire du Canada v. 22-23, Montréal, Éd. de Montréal, 1948.
Savard (Abbé Félix-Antoine) La minuit. Montréal, Fides, 1948.
Séguin (G.-A.) L’armoire aux remèdes… Montréal, Éd. Lumen, 1947, 210p.
Simard (Jean) Félix. Montréal, Éd. Variétés, 1947, 135p.
Société des Écrivains canadiens. Bulletin bibliographique 1947, Montréal, Société des Écrivains canadiens, 1948, 120p
Tanghe (Raymond) Esquisse américaine. Montréal, Fides, 1947, 234p.
Toupin (Laurette-E.), La bibliothèque à l’école. Montréal. Fides, 1947, 85p.
Trudel (A. P. Paul-Eugène)o.f.m. Pére Frédéric de Ghyvelde et Berthléem. Les Trois-Rivières, Éd. B.P.F. 1947, 342p.
Trudeau (Claude Bernard) Ciels nouveaux. Poèmes Montréal, Éd. du Diamant, 102p.
Veber (Michel) Celluloïd et gélatine. Montréal, Éd. Servir, 1948.