When Canadian literature moved to New York
By: Nick Mount.
Series: Studies in book and print culture
Publisher: University of Toronto Press
Published: 2005
Place of publication: Toronto; Buffalo
Language: eng
Number of pages: 217
Subjects: Canadian literature -- Publishing -- New York (State) -- New York -- History -- 19th century.; Authors, Canadian -- United States -- History -- 19th century.; Canadian literature -- 19th century -- History and criticism.; Literature canadienne-anglaise -- Édition -- New York (État) -- New York -- Histoire -- 19e siècle.; Écrivains canadiens -- États-Unis -- Histoire -- 19e siècle.; Littérature canadienne -- 19e siècle -- Histoire et critique.
Description: "Canadian literature began not in the backwoods of Ontario or the salt flats of New Brunswick, but in the cafes, publishing offices, and boarding houses of late nineteenth-century New York, where writing developed as a profession and where the groundwork for the Canadian canon was laid. So argues Nick Mount in When Canadian Literature Moved to New York." "The last decades of the nineteenth century saw an extraordinary exodus from English Canada, draining the country of half its writers and all but a few of its literary celebrities. Motivated by powerful obstacles to a domestic literature, most of these migrants landed in New York - by the 1890s the centre of the continental literary market - and found for the first time a large, receptive audience and recognition from non-Canadian publishers and reviewers." "Although the expatriates of the 1880s and 1890s - including Bliss Carman, Ernest Thompson Seton, and Palmer Cox - were recognized for their achievements in Canada, the domestic literature they themselves spurred into existence rekindled a nationalist imperative to distinguish Canadian writing from other literatures, especially American. Thought to lack the 'spirit of the soil, ' most of the work of these writers was slowly eliminated from the emerging English Canadian canon. When Canadian Literature Moved to New York is the story of these expatriate writers: who they were, why they left, what they achieved, and how they changed Canadian literary history."--Jacket.
Notes: Includes bibliographical references (p. [191]-202) and index.