History of the Book in Canada / Histoire du livre et de l'imprime au Canada. Vol. 2, 1840-1918 (review)

The three-volume History of the Book in Canada project, which is funded by a Major Collaborative Research Initiative by SSHRCC, is a formidable, broad-based undertaking first bruited over a decade ago – one comparable in its way to the scope and of the Literary History of Canada (1965), first published in the 1960s in the nationalistic flush of Canada's centennial.

Indeed, the history of the book project represents even more formidable coordination and coverage than the latter in its particular field, given that it seeks to cover the evolution of print culture in both French and English Canada, while also encompassing the impact and nature of print culture vis-à -vis other ethnic and racial communities, including Aboriginal print and publication history, gender history, and other historiographic preoccupations of the early twenty-first century.

Let praise be given at the outset: volume 2 constitutes a major achievement of research, analysis, and synthesis, one that offers in-depth analysis of print culture and its societal significance valuable to historians of whatever stripe, be they political, social, business, or cultural. For example, within minutes of receiving the volume for review, I had found valuable new information both about the history of book culture in Brockville (early printers, the Fulfords – as innovative advertisers of their pink pills, one of North America's best-selling Victorian patent medicines), as well as about the history of textbooks and the Methodist Book and Publishing House in that era, material valuable to my current projects.

Moreover, Canadian publishing history and library history, to name just two areas covered in the text, are areas that, despite the earlier pioneering work of scholars – and outstanding volume contributors – like Royal Military College professor emeritus George L. Parker (publishing and copyright history) and McGill's Peter F. McNally (the history of Canadian libraries) constitute important topics for which we have woefully little information at all.

In that respect, it is unfortunate that the volumes – divided chronologically and synthetic in intent as they are – do not offer histories of individual Canadian publishing companies, given the format of the volumes. The lack of focus on specific firms is particularly regrettable because of the scantiness of other sources on publishing in Canada, whether in the nineteenth or the twentieth century. Unfortunately, the 'comb through the index for page references' method of research is no satisfactory substitute for such coverage, either – particularly over a three-volume set. But that is the only major criticism one can make of this project as realized in volume 2.

Historians will be fascinated by the way cultural and social differences in the evolution of French and English Canada emerge in Canadian print culture during the period 1840–1918 – for example, in the respective nature of the serials dealt with, in the differing history of Quebec and non-Quebec libraries and their publics, as well as distinct differences between anglophone and francophone reading communities and reading practices – to name just a few of the topics and chapter divisions embraced by the volume. For example, Yvan Lamonde and Michel Varette, drawing on their own research and that of earlier scholars, analyze literature in Quebec and elsewhere for the period in a lucid and useful way, highlighting the marked (but lessening) disparity between francophone and anglophone Quebec marriage-register literacy in the mid-nineteenth century and the disproportionately higher literacy rate of Quebec brides vis-à -vis their grooms in the decade 1880–1890 (456).

Elsewhere in the volume, 'Politics and Print' is a rich subset of the chapter on 'Print in Daily Life,' with sections by Veronica Strong-Boag on print and women's suffrage and Bertrum MacDonald on 'Governments as Printers.' As for the latter offering, any historian interested in patronage, that most enduringly meaty of topics, will be amused by...