On Canadian Literature, 1806–1960: A Check List of Articles, Books, and Theses on English-Canadian Literature, its Authors and Language by Reginald Eyre Watters, Inglis Freeman Bell, and: Northrop Frye in Modem Criticism ed. by Murray Krieger (review)

HUMANITIES 411 together.''' This secret game is reminiscent of Alice's entertainments in Through the Looking-Glass and of the Bronte children and their imaginary world, though they gave up the play when they left adolescence. One may conjecture that the fantasies projected in the Jalna books, and in most of her other fiction, are derived, directly or indirectly, from the "play." These fantasies included not only domestic scenes and family comedy of the soap opera variety but also virile men, incest, infidelity, and vaguely queer artistic types. Miss de la Roche hints at homosexuality and lesbianism to titillate her readers, but the larger-than-life Whiteoaks kept the sex and perversion scenes from seeming unduly "cheap" or "sordid." Some of her scenes are hardly subtle, though, as this section in Delight (an early, non-Jalna novel) indicates: The lonely Delight thinks of her teapot, a gift from her granny who had drained "the last drop from its curly spout." She takes the teapot to bed with her, where it "would be company, a bedfellow, almost." Wanting company, she "laid one warm hand On its shiny fluted belly." The passage continues even more suggestively. Mr. Hambleton ignores such scenes, for his interest is not psychological . In his biography he does tell us much about the Roche family and how its members are used in the de la Roche fiction. He gives us information on Canadian and foreign reaction to her popular successes. Lending library ladies will not be much interested in his biography, but Mr. Hambleton has done literary and cultural historians a great service in providing a large amount of factual information which will be invaluable for later studies of popular fiction. (GEORGE HENDRICK) All concerned with Canadian cultural history and writing are greatly indebted already to Professor R. E. Watters for his invaluable Check List of Canadian Literature and Background Materials, 1628-1950 (1959). The companion volume, On Canadian Literature, 1806-1960: A Check List of Articles, Books, and Theses on English-Canadian Literature, its Authors and Language (compiled by Reginald Eyre Watters and IngliS Freeman Bell, University of Toronto Press, pp. xii, 167, $7.50), adds to that debt. It provides at last an extensive bibliography of what has been written on Canadian literature in English (or translated into English), on its authors, and on the English language in Canada. Literature here means "belles-lettres and loosely related categories," chiefly history, travel and exploration, autobiography, and higher journalism . 412 LEITERS IN CANADA The compilers have culled their material from the standard indexes of books and periodicals, and from bibliographies of individual writers such as those prepared by Earle Birney and Margerie Lowry on Malcolm Lowry, or by V. L. O. Chittick on Haliburton. Professor Walter Avis supplied the section on "Language and Linguistics"; the material on theses and dissertations came from Canadian Graduate Theses in the Ht£manities and Social Sciences, 1921-1946 and from the more recent lists prepared annually by Professor Carl Klinck. The titles of chapters of books such as E. K. Brown's On Canadian Poetry, or W. E. Collins' The White SC&Vannahs are listed separately. The indexes of many special journals and transactions of societies, Canadian and otherwise, have been raked through. Items from most encyclopedias and from most biographical dictionaries have been excluded; reviews have not been listed unless they are of article length or are by outstanding writers. The volume is organized into two major parts. Part I (pp. 2-70) lists items under general topics: "General Bibliographies," "Canadian Culture and Background," "Canadian English: Language and LinguiStics ," "Canadian Literature-General," followed by sections on the literary forms. It also has sections on "Regionalism," "Songs, Folksongs, and Folklore," "Journalism, Publishing, and Periodicals," "Libraries and Reading," and "Censorship and Copyright." Part II (pp. 71-165) is a check list of studies on individual authors, arranged alphabetically. It includes some 400 poets, humorists, explorers, doctors, novelists and romancers, artists and autobiographers, politicians and publiCists. A comparison of the number of items on each author affords a rough contour map of our critical taste before 1960. Bliss Carman and Stephen Leacock received most attention (three pages of items on each). Haliburton , Lampman, and Charles...