Encyclopedia of Literature in Canada ed. by W.H. New (review)

humanities 161 university of toronto quarterly, volume 73, number 1, winter 2003/4 does not discuss that bane of the modern bibliophile, for which there can be no excuse, the highlighter pen). Yet I had not realized that I was a puritan lover of the pristine book until I read this one; and the author might be glad to know that I am a partial convert to her cause, as my copy of her own book now testifies. (SHERIDAN GILLEY) W.H. New, editor. Encyclopedia of Literature in Canada University of Toronto Press. xxii, 1348. $75.00 Building upon earlier reference works on Canadian literature, W.H. New and his 308 contributors offer more than 1400 single-author entries and hundreds of other articles of >currently available information about writers and writing in Canada.= In his preface the editor notes that the Encyclopedia >interprets widely the term Aliterature in Canada.@= Certainly this >plurality of Canadian literature= is fully displayed in the Encyclopedia, with substantial entries on Acadian writing, Commonwealth in Canadian literature, Aboriginal languages, exploration literature, the publishing industry, and gay and lesbian writing, among many others. Entries provide useful cross-references throughout, with informative biographical data and suggestions for further reading. Of particular value are the many articles on First Nations oral and written languages and literatures (including several by Robert Bringhurst). Despite New=s promise of >currently available information,= many entries seem to stop about 1998 or 1999 (the Governor-General=s Awards, for example). While there is an unavoidable gap in providing current information in such a text, the inclusion of a reference to the death of Timothy Findley in June 2002 will prompt readers to wonder why other relevant information from the 1998B2002 period is omitted. In addition, this Encyclopedia presents many problems for a reader seeking accurate information on names, titles, and dates. In the >Awards= article, Gunnars=s The Rose Garden appears as The Garden Rose, Fred Wah=s Diamond Grill as Way=s Diamond Girl, and Constantin-Weyer=s Un homme se penche sur son passé as Un homme se pendre sur son passé (this title is reported accurately in the individual-author entry, but his mother=s name should appear as Bompard; and the December 1988 symposium on his work at SaintBoniface is ignored, as is the inaugural issue of Cahiers franco-canadiens de l=Ouest [Spring 1989] devoted to his work). In the >Biography= article the name of Andrée Yanacopoulo is misspelled, Signé is missing its accent, and the name of Gabrielle Roy=s biographer François Ricard is misreported (it does appear correctly in Alison Calder=s entry on Roy). Crozier=s A Saving Grace is once retitled Mrs. Bentley, and Vera Lysenko=s Yellow Boots becomes The Red Boots (possibly a confusion with Sullivan=s The Red Shoes). Similar oversights and errors include the Legate and Moritz biographies of Leacock; 162 letters in canada 2002 university of toronto quarterly, volume 73, number 1, winter 2003/4 Paulette Collet=s Deux patries, deux exils on Marie Le Franc and L=hiver dans le roman canadien-français in the article on motifs in Quebec writing in French; Atwood=s Strange Things in the article on >North=; Denis Sampson=s Brian Moore: The Chameleon Novelist; Sheila Munro=s Lives of Mothers and Daughters; Solecki=s The Last Canadian Poet and Beyond Remembering on Pratt; and Shields=s Jane Austen biography. Benson and Conolly=s Oxford Companion to Canadian Theatre is omitted from the article on >Theatre History,= and Ronald Wright (shortlisted for the 1989 Trillium Award for Time among the Maya) is named as the winner of that award. Numbers seem to pose particular difficulty in this volume, too often unreliable in its details (correct information is indicated in parentheses): Laurence went to Africa in 1951 (1950); Davies died on 3 (2) December 1995; Klein=s The Rocking Chair was published in 1984 (1948); Klinck=s edition of Literary History of Canada appeared in 1956 (1965); MacLennan died on 9 (7) November 1990; Ricard=s biography of Roy was published in 1966 (1996); The Roaring Girl won the Governor-General=s Award in 1997 (1995); Škvorecký=s The Engineer of...