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This editorial, written by the new editor of the Papers of the Bibliographical Society of Canada, introduces a new thrust for the journal, that of publishing documents and tools that will be interesting and useful to the book studies community. The editorial also gives a brief overview of the papers in the current issue and themes for upcoming issues, as well as an overview of the editor’s own research on The Ryerson Press and Ontario’s Royal Commission on Book Publishing, which is the source of the feature document for this issue—“The Writers’ Union Meets the Royal Commission”—as well as one of the tools, a table of contents of Royal Commission testimony. Patricia Demers’s keynote speech from Congress 2018, articles by Meaghan Scanlon and Richard Virr, and an index compiled by Cameron Anstee are featured in the issue. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Since their first appearance in the 1930s, American comic books have been presented as collective works dependent on collaboration between a variable number of actors, namely writers, illustrators, inkers, colorists, letterers, and publishers. In the fast-moving world of serial comic book publishing (new works are generally released monthly), this teamwork-based approach is necessary for ensuring continuous productivity. This work method, having proven effective, was also adopted by the majority of Quebec comic book publishers from the early 1980s onward. However, in these cases, collaboration sometimes moves beyond the sharing of work between creators employed by the same publisher. In fact, correspondence between publishers and the peritexts of their published works reveal that a spirit of collegial solidarity unites rival producers, who exchange both ideas and advice about their respective series, and in doing so, contribute indirectly to the content of comic books published by their competitors. Nevertheless, the reasons giving rise to this mutual aid between publishers may be worth questioning. From a sense of friendship between colleagues to pure commercial opportunism, what issues specific to the field of comic book publishing in Quebec does this apparent sense of fraternity reveal? What are the conditions that contribute to the exchange of services between publishers, scriptwriters, and illustrators? In short, how can this sense of solidarity between competing producers evolving within the same competitive market be explained? This article will answer these questions in an effort to shed more light on the social dimension of serial comic book production in Quebec and Canada. It will reveal that collaboration among actors evolving in the québécois field of comic book publishing (and sometimes also in the Anglo-Canadian and American spheres) serves to consolidate the position independent publishers occupy in the constrained market in which they are attempting to invest themselves. The sense of fraternity that unites them is welcome and necessary in that it fosters interpersonal relationships that are more transactional than conflictual in nature, which can transform potential competitors into advertising or legitimating entities, and perhaps even into creative partners. This dynamic creates an alliance in which all parties benefit from a collaborative approach, which acts as a collective defence against the threat of market domination by comic book publishing industry giants. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The new Quebec publishers that emerged in the early 2000s present themselves in their discourse as having close ties with their authors, but also with other actors in the book chain, such as booksellers and printers. Without reducing this element to simple positioning, I would argue that the promotion of this outreach work, presented in the form of privileged interpersonal relationships, is a nodal point in the ethos of new publishers, who use it to set themselves apart from their elders, such as Boréal and Leméac. I will show how this “publication of proximityâ€? can be seen in the discourse of “emergingâ€? authors and publishers, particularly at Le Quartanier, Alto and Marchand de feuilles. Collaboration and proximity are at the foundation of the ethos of these publishing houses, these values being part of their collective image. Their camaraderie is embodied, for example, in pictures that show authors and their publishers participating in events or activitiesâ€"whether literary or not. Beyond the expected couple of the publisher and the author, we also highlight the proximity of many people involved in the book chain: booksellers, graphic designers, distributors, etc. In short, new publishers seem to be polishing their image by relying on multiple close collaborations as well as on editorial structures on a human scale, which seems central to the positioning of emerging publishers. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

"French-English Translation in Canada"? is the transcript of a talk given by Montreal publisher Maynard Gertler to an unidentified audience in 1976. When Gertler founded Harvest House in 1959, his aim was to issue the first English-language translations of the works of Québécois writers in inexpensive, accessible editions. The talk is a document of enduring value that provides incisive analysis of contemporary Canadian publishing and presents the challenges facing a domestic publisher who was committed to issuing French works in English translation. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article contains a table of contents to the 4408 pages of official testimony from Ontario’s Royal Commission on Book Publishing, which operated from 1971 to 1973 looking into questions about the business of publishing in Canada. The table of contents helps researchers discover who testified before the commission—whether as individuals or on behalf of their company or organization—and when they testified in order to be able to find the official transcript of their testimony and their accompanying brief in the archival files held at the Archives of Ontario (RG 18-164). The article begins with a short introduction to the commission and its work, followed by six excerpts from the testimony from Quill & Quire, Peter Martin, the McGraw-Hill Company of Canada, Campbell B. Hughes, Dr. Francess G. Halpenny, and Hugh MacLennan. The table of contents comprises the remaining two-thirds of the article. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In November 1970, a crisis arose in the Canadian publishing industry: The Ryerson Press, English Canada’s oldest publishing house, was sold to American branch plant McGraw-Hill. In response, the Ontario government mounted a Royal Commission to investigate the business conditions of publishing in Canada. The commission accepted briefs from anyone who wanted their say and heard hundreds of hours of testimony. But it wasn’t until Farley Mowat bumped into Richard Rohmer at a party and demanded to know why the commission wasn’t talking directly to writers—they had actually heard from the few who had sent in briefs—that the date was set for 9 December 1971 for a group of writers to give their testimony. Some of those who testified went on to found The Writers’ Union of Canada (TWUC) in 1973. Jack Gray went on to separate the Writers Guild of Canada (WGC) from the Alliance of Canadian Cinema, Television and Radio Artists (ACTRA) in order to get a better deal for scriptwriters. The writers testifying before the commission here include June Callwood, Margaret Atwood, Ian Adams, Hugh Garner, Al Purdy, Farley Mowat, Max Braithwaite, David Helwig, Jack Gray, Graeme Gibson, Fred Bodsworth, and Dennis Lee. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In 1923, Édouard Garand founded a publishing house in Montreal whose main purpose was to promote Canadian literature among the Francophone working classes across Canada. Gérard Malchelosse, member of the editorial committee, bore witness to the nationalist leanings of the press, explaining at the time that it was “a Canadian publishing house of Canadian novels, written for Canadians by Canadians and printed in Canada by Canadians. It’s a national enterprise intended to provide an injection of patriotism while helping our authors by distributing their works.” Even though these affirmations might lead one to believe that publishing house of Édouard Garand is exclusively aimed at a local audience, through studying the distribution of the collection “Le Roman canadien” we can learn more about the enterprise’s particularly far-reaching commercial distribution networks: the major cities of French and British colonies, as well as South and North America, from New York as far as to Buenos Aires. This article proposes the study of these networks in terms of their colonial, political, and commercial positionings, while also placing in context this distribution system with the export of Canadian books during the period. The analysis of the documents held in the Fonds Édouard-Garand (Université de Montréal) reveals the existence of two distinct networks. From 1926 onwards, the publishing house announces that its Canadian novels were sold in depots located in France, Great Britain, but also, more surprisingly, in Saigon, Algiers, and Cape Town. The publisher appears thus to have been making use of the commercial networks of French and British colonial depositories in order to participate in the overseas distribution, via different Francophone bookstores, of Canadian literature. Secondly, after 1944, while France was under Occupation, Montreal became the global centre of Francophone publishing, a new state of affairs that Garand took advantage of by using a variety of Canadian diplomatic and political channels in order to open new distribution networks in Latin America. His “Roman canadien” was promoted to middlemen in Argentina, Chile, Colombia, Cuba, and Peru, via commercial representatives and attachés from Canada’s Department of External Affairs. However, Garand did not intend to participate in the network of North-South cultural and intellectual exchanges, studied notably by Michel Lacroix and Michel Nareau. The system set in place by the Montreal publisher was less concerned with the economy of knowledge and more concerned with turning a profit. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article considers the creation, publication, and reception history of The Home Cook Book, Canada’s first community and fundraising cookbook. Published initially in Toronto in 1877 as a fundraiser for the Hospital for Sick Children, the text of the work was heavily derived from a volume of the same name issued in Chicago several years earlier. Comparison of the text of the 1877 Toronto edition with the earlier Chicago text proves many of its recipes were not Canadian in origin. As a result, the work offers a clear demonstration of how American food preferences and cooking practices came to permeate Canadian cuisine. Although its affiliation with the hospital quickly faded away, the Canadian version of The Home Cook Book remained continuously in print for fifty-two years, its content undergoing only very modest changes across that half century. We locate The Home Cook Book as a hybrid of two genres: the commercial domestic manual and the community cookbook. Our analysis combines Lynne Ireland’s and Elizabeth Driver’s frameworks for interpreting historic cookbooks as a method for understanding the impact of The Home Cook Book. With those frameworks in view, our study examines the origins of this cookbook, with particular emphasis on the influences on its content, design and development, and its publication history and reception. In particular, we focus attention on the selection and attribution of the recipes in their geographic and historical contexts, the bibliographical evidence associated with the original source text from which the cookbook derives, and the textual variations that appeared in its later iterations. In addition, the larger impact of The Home Cook Book is considered through a review of selected Canadian community cookbooks that appeared in its wake. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Following Confederation, Canada was deemed a Dominion and provided with sufficient powers to conduct its own affairs. But the de facto experience was that when its affairs crossed international borders, Imperial preferences took precedence and Dominion reverted to colony. The arena of copyright was no exception. American publishers had captured the Canadian reading market through both piracy and private arrangements with British copyright owners. The Canadian government tried to regain its market through an innovative measure which would provide compensation to foreign copyright owners and foster Canadian publishers and authors. That proposal was firmly denied by Britain; it sought instead to hold Canada to the role of customs officer with respect to the duties owed for unauthorized American reprints circulating in the colony. This historic fact is not in doubt; but a study from the perspective of British authors, largely through the journal of the Society of Authors (U.K.), offers insight into these nineteenth-century events. Intriguingly, British authors had shown an intelligent awareness of the difficulties surrounding reading in the colonies and, both implicitly and explicitly, gave some support for Canada’s proposal. However, stronger voices from within the British publishing sector ensured that copyright remained bound by tradition. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Dans cet article, l'auteure examine le cas de la maison d'édition canadienne Copp Clark et sa contribution à l'approvisionnement de manuels scolaires sur le territoire canadien. Marquée par trois grandes phases, l'histoire de la firme est représentative de la triste histoire des éditeurs de manuels scolaires en général. L'entreprise fit ses débuts en tant que librairie de détail. Elle s'acquittait parallèlement de travaux d'impression et de lithographie. Progressivement, elle se mit à l'édition de manuels scolaires, devenant une agence pour des maisons d'édition étrangères tout en développant et en produisant ses propres titres. Finalement, Copp Clark fut racheté par une firme établie à l'étranger. Après plusieurs rachats et fusions commerciales et éditoriales, la maison d'édition de manuels scolaires disparut complètement. L'auteure de cette contribution se penche sur trois aspects du programme éditorial de l'entreprise : d'abord, les Ontario Readers, un contrat que Copp Clark partageait avec deux autres firmes; ensuite, la publication de cahiers d'écriture; enfin, le rôle de la maison d'édition en tant que représentante pour la firme américaine Row Peterson. Dans son étude, l'auteure analyse également les facteurs économiques, politiques, administratifs, démographiques et pédagogiques qui ont contribué à la disparition de ce fleuron de l'édition canadienne. En fait, la trajectoire de la maison d'édition est située dans un contexte plus large : celui de l'édition canadienne en général. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Entre 1920 et 1940, trois maisons d'édition torontoises -- McClelland & Stewart, Ryerson Press et Macmillan of Canada -- négocièrent fermement avec les auteurs canadiens des contrats distincts pour le marché national. Plusieurs des auteurs du pays réussissaient à l'époque à faire publier leurs œuvres chez des éditeurs étrangers, lesquels conservaient habituellement les droits mondiaux des titres édités, contrôlant par la même occasion le marché canadien. Cependant, les contrats distincts des décennies 1920 et 1930 furent plus lucratifs pour les éditeurs nationaux, puisqu'ils n'avaient désormais plus à payer de redevances aux maisons d'édition étrangères. Ils l'étaient d'autant plus pour les écrivains, qui recevaient davantage de redevances grâce à cette entente. De plus, les agents de liaison des maisons d'édition canadiennes ainsi que leurs homologues des autres pays s'assuraient que les auteurs d'ici avaient toujours accès aux marchés internationaux. Cette augmentation des contrats éditoriaux distincts fut une étape cruciale dans la transformation du commerce du livre au Canada: d'abord colonial, il devint de plus en plus autonome. Au début de la Seconde Guerre mondiale, un nouveau sentiment d'appartenance commença à régner parmi la communauté d'auteurs du pays. Qui plus est, la littérature canadienne était désormais le sujet de débats animés et de critiques vives. Cela dit, les maisons d'édition nationales durent continuer de représenter des entreprises de l'extérieur, puisqu'elles ne pouvaient pas assurer leur survie grâce au bassin d'auteurs locaux, encore trop restreint à cette époque. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Au début des années 1850, à Oshawa, William Orr conçut un plan ambitieux afin de promouvoir la phonographie ainsi que la réforme de l'orthographe dans l'Ouest canadien et les colonies britanniques en Amérique du Nord. En fait, Orr fit la promotion de la sténographie Pitman. Il fut aussi le directeur et l'éditeur d'une revue, The Canadian Phonetic Pioneer (1859-61), et, selon toute vraisemblance, le premier phonotypographe du pays. Il devrait être considéré comme un innovateur dans l'histoire des médias et des communications. Dans cet article, les auteures reviennent sur la vie et l'oeuvre de Orr, et plus particulièrement sur l'histoire de l'édition du Canadian Phonetic Pioneer. Elles mettent en contexte l'oeuvre de Orr et la situent par rapport aux politiques du mouvement phonographique international du dix-neuvième siècle. Elles font la démonstration que la réforme de l'orthographe fut, somme toute, un pas de plus vers la réforme sociale. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Dans cet article, l'auteur analyse les relations d'auteurs canadiens, de 1890 à 1990, avec leurs agents littéraires. Le vingtième siècle a été témoin de changements énormes en ce qui concerne le statut et la définition de l'auteur canadien. Or, l'examen des relations entre les auteurs et les agents littéraires met en lumière de tels changements et permet de mieux comprendre comment la littérature canadienne a été produite et diffusée. L'auteur fait dialoguer la biographie, l'histoire, l'économie, le droit d'auteur, les politiques gouvernementales sur la culture et l'analyse littéraire afin d'illustrer le rôle que les agents littéraires ont occupé dans la formation des carrières d'auteurs canadiens. Ce faisant, il cherche à corriger l'affirmation répandue mais fausse que les agences littéraires n'étaient pas actives au Canada avant les années 1950. Par la présentation d'un panorama chronologique des partenariats entre des auteurs canadiens ainsi que des agents informels et professionnels du Canada, des États-Unis et de la Grande-Bretagne, il propose les prémisses d'une histoire plus détaillée sur la nature de ce type de collaboration littéraire, qui a perduré au cours de ce siècle agité. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]