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Texts and Contexts: CEECT’s Scholarly Editions
- University of Ottawa Press
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Home Ground Final.indd 275 14-03-19 09:54 Texts and Contexts: CEECT’s Scholarly Editions MARY JANE EDWARDS INTRODUCTION In a paper that appeared in a 2007 issue of Australasian Canadian Studies, I stated that the account was “the latest, and possibly the last, version of the work called CEECT” that I should prepare (“The Centre” 15). I was wrong, however, for I spoke again about the project at “Rediscovering Early Canadian Literature,” the Canadian Literature Symposium held at the University of Ottawa in May 2010. Giving the talk in the city where CEECT was born and in the capital of the country whose early history its scholarly editions seek to illuminate was a particular pleasure. In this expanded and revised version of what I said at the Ottawa conference, I shall give a brief history of CEECT and its contributions to the rediscovery of aspects of early Canadian literature. Then I shall consider challenges that faced the project and that continue to face those who would venture into the still only partly imagined site of the texts and contexts of EnglishCanadian culture up to the early decades of the twentieth century. In the course of my comments I shall also touch on several topics listed in the “Call for Papers” for the Symposium, including the adequacy of our research “into the authors, texts, literary and publishing practices . . . of early Canada” and the work on these and other subjects that still needs to be accomplished. A BRIEF HISTORY OF CEECT The Centre for Editing Early Canadian Texts was founded at Carleton University in the early 1980s to prepare scholarly editions of major Home Ground Final.indd 276 14-03-19 09:54 Mary Jane Edwards works of early EnglishCanadian prose, but its seeds were sown many years before. I began to take a conscious interest in Canadian literature in the late 1950s when I was an undergraduate at Trinity College, University of Toronto. At that time the subject was not much taught in our universities. Even though I took an Honours BA in Modern Language and Literature with a specialization in English and French, for example, EnglishCanadian literature appeared only twice on a syllabus for a course in English, once in my first year and once in my fourth. We never got around to discussing it in either course, however, and we certainly were not examined on it. There were at least two reasons for this situation. One was that many academics, like the distinguished professor whom I encountered at University College, University of Toronto, in the mid1960s, sincerely believed that Canadian literature was simply not worth studying. When I announced that for my doctorate I was going to specialize in early Canadian fiction, he visibly cringed. Then he opined that the works of Evelyn Waugh were far more important than all the novels that I could possibly read in both our official languages. There were professors who were honourable exceptions to such dismissiveness, of course. One was Gordon Roper, who taught me as both an undergraduate and a graduate student, and who helped shape the careers of George L. Parker, Michael Peterman, and Rupert Schieder, each of whom was to contribute to the CEECT project. Another reason for the lack of interest in early Canadian literature was the paucity of available editions of, as well as of secondary sources about, our early authors. By the mid1960s, nevertheless, the situation was improving, and university courses in Canadian literature were becoming common. Some of this enthusiasm for our culture was aroused by the preparations for Expo ’67 and other celebrations of the centennial of Confederation. Most of it was due, however, to a few scholars who produced several landmark works of bibliography and criticism. These included A Checklist of Canadian Literature and Background Materials 1628–1950 (1959), compiled by Reginald Eyre Watters, and Literary History of Canada: Canadian Literature in English (1965), produced under the general editorship of Carl F. Klinck. These men also had their hand in the establishment of several series of reprints of Canadian texts. ThemostnotableofthesewasMcClellandandStewart’sNewCanadian Library (NCL), which issued its first title in 1958. To its credit, this series, under the general editorship of Malcolm Ross, did publish early Canadian prose works, but it tended to reprint versions based on unauthorized, 276 [23.22.23.162] Project MUSE (2024-03-29 14:38 GMT) Home Ground Final.indd 277 14-03-19 09:54 Texts and Contexts 277 often...