Robert Kroetsch by Robert Lecker, and: Another Country: Writings by and about Henry Kreisel ed. by Shirley Neuman (review)

nUM.tU''IrIIII.l:!.::' lUI ing, her presentations of Ojibwa and Mohawk culture and behaviour, and her attention to the flora and fauna of the area. The local historian and botanistin Trail! provide a solid basis of authentic detail against which her attempt to transplant the Crusoe myth forcibly to Canada can be measured . In his skilfulintroduction, Rupert Schieder details both the evolution of Trail!'s idea for Crusoes and its curious textual history. As was often the case in her long writing career, Traill, living out of the way in rural Upper Canada, had very little control over the various appearances of the book and received little remuneration (though her need was great) for her efforts. Lacking a surviving manuscript or extant publishers' records, Schieder was led on a merry chase through libraries and archives insearch of exact and relevant information that would throw light on the book's publishing history. At the same time, with the aid of CEECT'S careful procedures for collating various editions and issues of the text, he provides the reader with a series of appendices that show the changes Traill incorporated into a later edition (1882) and a list of variant readings in the three editions published during her lifetime (1852,1859, 1882). The apparatus also includes sixteen pages of explanatory notes, a record of published versions of the text, a bibliographical description of authoritative editions, and list of line-end hyphenated compounds and emendations in the copy-text chosen by CEECT. Schieder's meticulous research has produced answers to most questions of bibliographical concern. That there is still more to be discovered, however, ought not to escape readers. That fact, which is perhaps a bibliographical condition, came home to me when, during a recent look at the resources of the American Antiquarian Society in Worcester, Massachusetts , I came across a three-column article, 'The Lost Child' by Mrs. Trail [sic) in the May 1841 issue of the Ladies' Garland, a Philadelphia magazine. The article, which describes a lost child reported in the Cobourg Star in 1837, reminds us that Traill did occasionally find publication in American magazines. How this particular article came to appear in this particular magazine and how the appearance relates to the unfolding of Canadian Crusoes remain, at least temporarily, a mystery. (MICHAEL PETERMAN) Robert Lecker. Robert Kroetsch Twayne World Author Series No. 768. Twayne. ,65. us $19.95 Shirley Neuman, editor. Another Country: Writings by and about Henry Kreisel NeWest Literary Documents Series, vol. VII. NeWest Press 1985. 362. $'9·95, $9·95 paper Both Robert Lecker's critical introduction to the fiction, poetry, and criticism of Robert Kroetsch and Shirley Neuman's compilation of the uncol- 162 LETTERS IN CANADA 1986 lected writing of Henry Kreisel are welcome books. Though we do not generally associate Kreisel and Kroetsch, reviewing these books together made me think about the similarities between the two writers. Both were born in the 1920S; both have spent their adult lives attached to a university ; both are associated with Alberta: Kroetsch grew up in and was educated in that province, while Kreisel, a native Austrian, moved to Edmonton from Toronto after his MA and, except for a brief period in England for a PH D, has remained a teacher and administrator at the University of Alberta. The experience of western prairie landscape has affected the writing of both men. Most of Kroetsch's fiction and poetry is located on the Canadian prairies and he has frequently spoken of the shaping influence of the milieu. Kreisel is often first encountered by student readers as the author of The Prairie: A State of Mind: with its early and influential discussion of a regional literature in Canada, or of The Broken Globe: a tale that starkly dramatizes the prairie perspective in its account of a farmer's obstinate refusal to believe the earth is curved. As well as a shared response to the Canadian West, the works of the two men have another feature in common. Robert Lecker calls attention to it when he maintains that Kroetsch, having spent nearly seventeen years of his teaching career attached to a university in the United States before returning to...