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The ArQuives: Canada's LGBTQ2+ Archives, founded in 1973, holds one of the largest collections of queer serials in the world, with more than ten thousand titles. Most are on paper, but formats have been evolving. Beginning in the 1980s, the ArQuives participated in small-scale microfilming projects. Microfilming of the collection increased greatly in 2005, when Primary Source Microfilm (PSM) undertook a large project to film a portion of the collection, resulting in 211 reels devoted to international gay and lesbian periodicals and newsletters. The PSM project was later repurposed and expanded by Gale Cengage, beginning in 2015, and forms part of its Archives of Sexuality and Gender online product. This paper examines the evolution of the ArQuives' serial holdings from paper to microform to digital formats, and explores recent in-house digitization efforts and future prospects for expanding access to these materials. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

À l'aube de leur cinquantième année d'existence en tant que publication savante, les Papers/Cahiers de la Société bibliographique du Canada continuent de jouer un rôle primordial dans l'histoire du livre au Canada. Cet article donne un aperçu historique des Papers/Cahiers et de leur évolution au fil des ans y compris des notices biographiques des principaux rédacteurs et collaborateurs. Il contient également des observations pertinentes au sujet du contenu intellectuel et culturel des Papers/Cahiers, des points de repères et des données bibliographiques en mettant surtout l'accent sur l'histoire du livre au Canada durant les deux dernières décennies. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Cet article examine les pages de garde contenues dans des reliures cartonnées et brochées de cinq textes du dix-huitième siècle français. Ces spécimens démontrent qu'il y des livres qui se doivent d'être conservés intacts comme artéfacts, étant donné que leurs feuillets jaunis par le temps peuvent fournir des indices sur le lieu et l'époque où ils ont été reliés, produits et diffusés, voire même donner un aperçu sur l'exercice de la censure. Il en va de même pour le travail de reliure le plus routinier pratiqué sur des ouvrages anciens, lequel peut faciliter notre compréhension des opérations commerciales jadis en vigueur. Le premier spécimen à l'étude est l'Histoire critique de la philosophie de Deslandes publiée par Jean Nourse à Londres en 1742. La typographie indique toutefois que l'ouvrage fut imprimé en Hollande. Même si ce livre fut frappé d'interdiction par le gouvernement français, les pages de garde donnent à penser qu'il fut relié en France. Le deuxième exemple est un pamphlet politique clandestin intitulé Influence du despotisme de l'Angleterre [1781] imprimé probablement à Neuchâtel et Besançon. La page de garde placée à la fin du livre est une page de titre de l'édition de 1779 ou 1780 de La Boussole imprimée par le même imprimeur de Besançon, ce qui suppose que la reliure fut fabriquée à cet endroit. Le troisième ouvrage est une traduction du Tableau de l'Angleterre et de l'Italie par Archenholtz et publiée à Strasbourg en 1788. Si l'on se fie à des événements survenus en septembre 1793 et rapportés par des journaux français de l'époque, la datation des pages de garde coïncide avec une période trouble de l'histoire politique et économique du pays, ce qui explique en partie la mauvaise qualité de la reliure. Le quatrième texte est l'Analyse des ouvrages de J.J. Rousseau publiée par la Veuve Duchesne à Paris en 1785. Comme l'ouvrage comporte un feuillet tiré d'un roman raté d'un dénommé Monvel publié par Duchesne une décennie plus tôt, on peut présumer que la reliure fut réalisée à Paris. Enfin le cinquième spécimen et non le moins intéressant est un pamphlet royaliste daté de 1789. La page de garde se trouvant à la fin du livre consiste en un feuillet tiré de la première édition in-octavo des Mémoires de Saint-Simon publiés par Buisson en octobre 1788. Si l'on compare cet exemple avec une édition in-douze de Buisson (1788), il appert que le censeur fit plus de coupures dans l'in-octavo que dans le format plus petit. La reliure fut sans doute réalisée à Paris au début de l'année 1789. Les feuillets supprimés auraient été probablement vendus à un cartonnier comme c'était l'usage à l'époque mais, dans ce cas-ci, ils furent utilisés par un relieur de manière que le texte censuré soit aisément lisible. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In the introduction to this special issue of the Papers of the Bibliographical Society of Canada, Karol'Ann Boivin and Mylène Fréchette underscore the limited visibility of book supply chain intermediaries in the public sphere. As these intermediaries become more and more interesting to researchers, we must take their relative erasure from the public imagination into account. Who are these unsung heroes? What is the scope of their impact on the book as an object, and how do their actions fit in with those of other intermediaries within the book supply chain? These are the questions that guided this special issue, which focuses on the nature of collective action in the world of literature. In closing, they introduce the three articles featured in the special edition, penned by Mylène Fréchette herself, Philippe Rioux, and Maxime Bolduc. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In his literary response to the articles recently featured in the special issue of the Papers of the Bibliographical Society of Canada, "OEuvrer ensemble. Les rouages collectifs dans la chaîne du livre,"? Nicholas Giguère addresses the myth of the lone genius bearing sole responsibility for the production of their literary works" a myth that has persisted but is now considered untenable among book historians. On the contrary, Giguère suggests that the "I"? always writes in collaboration with other literary agents. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

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]

In their introduction to a special issue of the Papers of the Bibliographical Society of Canada, co-editors Rebecka Taves Sheffield and Nicholas Giguère provide a brief historical overview of the emergence of an LGBTQ+ press in Canada, and describe how the history of LGBTQ+ print culture in Canada is inextricably intertwined with the country's history of media censorship, which has been often used to exclude LGBTQ+ people from public spaces. Sheffield and Giguère then summarize the articles, note, and review essay included in the special journal issue and describe how, on a whole, the contributors' research sheds new light on the relationship between LGBTQ+ print media and the communities that it has both served and helped to create, despite persistent censorship. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In post-war Quebec, the fascicle format experienced a meteoric rise in popularity. In order to draw all the heuristic potential from an analysis of this format, our article is based on a detailed study of the editorial peritext of some forty fascicles of sentimental novels published between 1945 and 1963 by the Éditions Police-Journal. On the one hand, these dime novels are comparable to "small books"--each issue generally contains a single story spanning 32 pages. The publisher's branding, ostensibly serves as a guarantee of its quality. On the other hand, these objects with their soft and colourful covers are in constant dialogue with the magazine, often emulating its fundamental mechanisms. Through a detailed analysis of these little-explored romance novels, we hope to inspire a reflection on the popular print formats of the 20th century. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The first novel by Frances Burney, Evelina, Or, the History of a Young Lady's Entrance into the World, published in 1778, has enjoyed long-standing popularity and has never gone out of print in English. A distinct cluster of its editions appeared at the end of the nineteenth- to the beginning of the twentieth-century. This period in book history was marked by the creative work of private-press book designers, printers, binders, and illustrators inspired by the aestheticism, arts and crafts, and art nouveau movements. Even though their pioneering work was destined for narrow circles of collectors and connoisseurs, it profoundly influenced the development of both industrial and artists' book design, heightening the awareness of books' aesthetic appeal. The fin de siècle was a time of nostalgia for idealized pre-industrial society, symptomatic of late Victorian and Edwardian escapism, which found its expression in lavish book ornaments and illustrations executed in the Directoire and Louis XVI styles. Late nineteenth- to early twentieth-century Evelinas, illustrated and decorated by Aubrey Beardsley, Arthur Rackham, and Hugh Thomson, produced by Dent, Newnes, and Macmillan, reflect a profound influence that innovative private presses had on general publishing practices and the quality of industrially produced books. These Evelinas, beautifully illustrated, bound in decorative covers, and well-printed, exemplify both the newly awakened interest in the book's physical makeup and aesthetic aspects and the late-Victorian and Edwardian escapist nostalgia characteristic of fin de siècle publishing. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In January 1944, when the influential Toronto critic William Arthur Deacon lamented the absence of a Canadian "equivalent of 'Uncle Tom's Cabin'" because Canadians are "still pioneering, still afraid of ourselves intellectually and emotionally," little did he know that a significant candidate was on the horizon. Gwethalyn Graham's second novel, Earth and High Heaven, which appeared later that year, launched an analysis of anti-Semitism that was quickly embraced by cultural arbiters and the general public in both Canada and the United States. This article situates the production and reception history of Graham's book in relation to other novels by English Canadian women writers that advocated for social change, and offers cases studies of the three most widely disseminated works that used the power of fiction to marshal empathy: Marshall Saunders's Beautiful Joe (1894), Graham's Earth and High Heaven (1944) and Joy Kogawa's Obasan (1981). [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article describes the uses of literature in The Labor Advocate: A Weekly Labor Reform Newspaper (Toronto, 1890-91). As editor of the Advocate, Thomas Phillips Thompson aimed to increase awareness of the means and consequences of industrial capitalism, and thus enhance the possibility of social justice for the working class. He did so in a mixed format periodical that included poetry, short fiction, and serialized novels as well as editorials, biographies, obituaries, reports, letters, and columns. Over forty-four issues, Thompson experimented with literary expression to attract readers and foster the democratic reform of social organization. Analysis of the Advocate points to the importance of communication strategies in both the early history of the Canadian labour press and the longer history of labour in transnational contexts. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article investigates how the seminal focus placed on portability as the defining characteristic of the book is erroneous and misguided. Based on Western concepts and early-modern bias that ultimately equates codex to book, the notion of portability is inapplicable to all book cultures and deserves re-examination. By redefining the meaning of the book to be an idea, an idea that can then be transposed textually and/or pictorially onto a substrate, scholars can come to understand how in ancient Egypt wall inscriptions and art were considered books, and how stone was a primary and fundamental book medium. Using Western, modern, and even global examples to explain how the book in its original state is a metaphysical entity, the notion of the book as object is in turn discarded because defining the book by its medium causes numerous restrictions - the object is not the book, merely its carrier. The importance of physical portability therefore becomes replaced in favour of metaphysical portability and its various implications. By using ancient Egyptian tomb walls as a case study, the meaning and boundaries placed on the book in book studies will be reframed and redefined by drawing Egyptian cultural practices, literature, ideologies, and the use of stone to establish examples of non-portable books. Any discussion of ancient book cultures primarily remains focused on papyrus or clay tablets (i.e., portable materials), a focus that skews the reality of ancient book cultures and gives rise to bias due to the neglect of other mediums that were far more important for ideological purposes. Egyptian book culture was, in fact, more than papyrus; a variety of materials were used as substrates, not all of which were portable in the conventional sense, but neither their use nor their significance to ancient Egyptian society should be dismissed. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Many critics have studied the relationship that unfolds between black men and white women in the novel How to Make Love to a Negro Without Getting Tired (1985) by Haitian-born Quebecois author Dany Laferrière. However, another type of relationship in Laferrière's work seems just as important, if not more important: the relationship between the aspiring writer and female readers as mediated by the book. This new angle allows for a rereading of the novel around a central axis--the idea of the literary Other, and the way it is articulated in the novel through the fictionalized book. This article first examines how, at the diegetic level, women own books, which makes them desirable to the narrator; in contrast, at the metadiegetic level, the terms of this equation are reversed, for it is now books, as mediators, which make objectified women attractive by being possessed by them. The relationship between the male reader (subject), the book (mediator), and the female reader (object) is then replaced by the relationship between the female reader (subject), the book (mediator), and the male reader (object), as the English-speaking white woman undertakes to judge the French-speaking Black (novelist) on the basis of books. In this context, the black male reader has no choice but to analyze the white female reader using her own book-based preconceptions. Indeed, whereas the white female reader judges the human subject based on his relationship to the book as an object, the black male reader uses the book to understand said human subject. It is therefore up to the aspiring black writer to help the white female reader rethink her relationship with books in general, and with literature in particular. This article shows that the narrator's objective (as a writer) is ultimately for his book to be read--in other words, to be possessed--by women, as he himself possesses women (as a womanizer). [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

From Renaissance collections to nineteenth-century print exhibitions, the "museumification" of literature calls for a redefinition of the traditional relationship between literature and books. Based on a sample of literary exhibitions in museums, this article examines the issues they bring to the fore on a period that extends from the end of the nineteenth century to today. It adopts a multidisciplinary approach to investigate the theoretical and practical underpinnings of the concomitant museumification of literature and books by observing the tensions that it creates on an institutional scale, both between libraries and museums and within certain literary paradigms (genres, "classics," etc.). This article thus explores the motivations that might explain the seemingly central place of the book in the literary exhibition as opposed to a multitude of objects a priori more spectacular. In this sense, the hyper-materiality of literature and its dissociation from the book (on which the very existence of the literary museum is paradoxically based) is the focus of detailed analysis here. The literary exhibition relies on the contextualization of the literary text and, especially in a time of emphasis on digital text, on its place in the history of the book. Museumification today tends to attribute additional value to literature that is on other platforms than paper as a way of adding a spectacular aspect to the exhibition. In this perspective, the contemporary "dematerialization" of the book poses an ultimate question - a question concerning digital literary collections and the use of digital platforms in the added value of literature. By facilitating and broadening the access to heritage, virtual exhibits (one example of the digital platform) offer the double advantage of protecting fragile collections and making their value more durable. They run the risk, however, of neutralizing the "aura" of paper books and the quest for tangible objects, which constitute the main reason for our society's attachment to paper books and the foundation of museums. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The article discusses papers presented at a conference series titled "Emerging Trends in Book History and Print Culture," hosted by students from the Groupe de recherches et d'études sur le livre au Québec (GRÉLQ) at the University of Sherbrooke and from the collaborative program in Book History and Print Culture (BHPC) at the University of Toronto. Topics of papers included the Québec gay militant periodical press and the representation of literature in museums.

The article discusses a series of artists' books the author exhibited in Newfoundland and Labrador for a master of fine arts degree she completed at the Waterford Institute of Technology in Ireland. The text for the books, taken from letters written to the author's grandparents in the 1930s by a Newfoundland Methodist minister, W. H. Dotchon, is discussed. The construction of the books so as to reveal parts of the letters but not others is discussed, as is the meaning of rearranging historical materials for works of modern art.

The article offers information on papers presented at a conference series entitled "Emerging Trends in Book History and Print Culture," hosted by students from the Groupe de recherches et d'études sur le livre au Québec (GRÉLQ) at the University of Sherbrooke and the collaborative program in Book History and Print Culture (BHPC) at the University of Toronto. Topics of papers included the Québec gay militant periodical press and the representation of literature in museums.

The article discusses the Canadian author, World War II veteran, and school administrator Colin McDougall, focusing on a discussion of McDougall's war experiences and why he only wrote one book based off research into the collection of his personal papers at McGill University's Rare Books and Special Collections Department. Other topics include a discussion of McDougall's book "Execution" and its basis off of real life Canadian soldier Harold Pringle, biographical information on McDougall, and a discussion of McDougall's writing process and the emotions behind his text. It also discussed postmodern criticisms of "Execution."

An introduction is presented to this special issue dealing with the history of books, focusing particularly on the impact of electronic books on bibliographical studies.

"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]

Until recently, the novel Two Girls on a Barge (1891) has been attributed to Canadian author and journalist Sara Jeannette Duncan (1861-1922), writing under the pseudonym “V. Cecil Cotes.� This article provides evidence that, while Duncan did appear to have influenced the style and structure of the novel, the author was Violet Cecil Cotes (1868-1915), Duncan's sister-in-law. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This essay combines close bibliographical analysis of the 1856-66 ledger of Thomas Burrowes, Justice of the Peace for Kingston Mills in what is now Ontario, with a wide-ranging discussion of what the document can reveal about its owner and about the practice of everyday justice in a small mill town in the years leading up to Canadian Confederation. It considers the effect of reading about law in manuscript versus printed form. It follows the intriguing evidence contained within the ledger to consider its possible uses by subsequent owners after Burrowes's death, tracing the ledger in its circular journey from Kingston Mills to the Queen's University Archives in Kingston via Detroit and Indiana. [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]

Les Correspondances d'Eastman, a literary festival held in the Estrie region of Quebec, offers a varied program that includes public readings, author interviews, literary performances, and writing workshops. The festival specifically aims to offer visitors the opportunity to write letters in writing gardens laid out by the citizens of Eastman village. On the one hand, by encouraging all visitors to write, the festival encourages the democratization of literature and creative writing. On the other hand, the festival supports the professionalization of recognized writers by compensating them for their participation in activities and offering them a platform to promote their works and increase their visibility. Based on the tensions underlying these two aspects of the festival, this article aims to explore the roles festivalgoers play in Les Correspondances d'Eastman and to compare them with those of professional writers. The analysis will focus primarily on the interactions between visitors and professional writers, which constantly oscillate between proximity, intimacy, and distance. [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]

This note focuses on the exhibition A Queer Century 1869-1969, which was on display from June 1st 2019 to September 11th, 2019 at University of British Columbia's Rare Books and Special Collections. The note describes the details of the exhibition, going through cases, notable and rare literary works, and discussions with the co-curators of the exhibition, Dr. Kyle Frackman and Dr. Gregory Mackie. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Published by Adolf Brand from 1896 until the rise of Nazism in 1933, Der Eigene was the world's first homosexual periodical. This article will argue that although many of the ideals espoused in this publication are now considered at best distasteful and at worst inherently wrong and associated with Nazism, there are elements of the publication that are worthy of greater attention in the historiography. I will begin by exploring the publication itself, its ideals and goals, and how it sought to use art to accomplish them. I will then suggest ways in which Der Eigene challenges our contemporary understanding of homosexuality by tracing clear links from ideas put forth by its contributors to elements of the modern LGBTQ community. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Vazaleen was a monthly serial queer party in Toronto founded by artist and promoter Will Munro (1975-2010) in 2000. Munro commissioned Toronto-based artist Michael Comeau (1975-) to create many silkscreen poster advertisements for these parties. His designs include an array of typographic treatments, references to popular culture and queer icons, and vibrant colour schemes. This article discusses these posters in relationship to Michel Foucault's theory of the heterotopia, Roland Barthes's semiotic analysis of advertising, and Eve Kosofsky Sedgwick's writing on camp. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article is the first-ever study on the Quebec novel L'âne de Carpizan ou L'évêque volant and its author, Raymond Goulet (1931- 1991), a performance artist, dancer, and choreographer originally from Rivière-du-Loup. The novel was self-published by Goulet in 1957 and had fallen into obscurity until recently. In contrast with other literary works of its time, L'âne de Carpizan stands out as a brazen satirical piece that imagines homosexuality and transidentity positively and is, as far as we know, the first Canadian literary work in which the protagonist undergoes gender affirming surgery. In their study, the authors examine Goulet's life and the circumstances surrounding the publication of his first and only novel, as well as the novel's editorial history. In the first part of the article, following a synopsis of L'âne de Carpizan, they present the results of their investigation into the novel's publication, distribution, and reception. In the second part, they recount the events of Raymond Goulet's life and all-too-brief writing career. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The early 1990s zine series gendertrash bears many traces of its material roots in Toronto's Church-Wellesley village, where creators Xanthra Phillipa MacKay and Mirha-Soleil Ross lived and worked, alongside those of a burgeoning international trans periodical subculture. Published cross-promotional materials in a number of influential trans periodicals from Canada and the United States, as well as archived correspondence, demonstrate the zine's involvement in broader networks of solidarity and resource-sharing and serve as a backdrop against which the radical politics of this ground-breaking "gender queer" publication become all the more apparent. This article analyzes these local and international contexts while also providing a brief discussion of how its form and distribution relate to contemporary scholarly understandings of the zine as genre. A digital collection of all four issues of gendertrash and related archival materials was published by Toronto's ArQuives in 2017; this article concludes by addressing privacy and categorization challenges which arose during the process of its creation and by drawing an affect-based analogy between the role of gendertrash's original subscription/distribution model and that of this recent digital collection. [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]

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]

Nelson Ball (1942– ), in addition to being an important Canadian poet, small press publisher, and bookseller, was an editor of little magazines in the 1960s. He co-founded and edited Volume 63 (1963–1967) and individually founded and edited Weed (1966–1967) and Hyphid (1968). This index provides full bibliographic data for each magazine (including dates, locations, and editors) and full listings of contributors and works (including information original to the magazines that identified from where a given contributor was writing). It also indexes advertisements for books, presses, magazines, and bookstores that appeared in the magazines to make possible the mapping of international small press distribution networks as they have been constructed through little magazines. This index includes an introduction that provides historical context for Ball’s small press practice and is intended to supplement existing bibliographies of Ball’s activities to continue building a literary, book-historical, and bibliographic record of his works. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Edward Gibbon’s (1737–1794) library was fundamental to his historical work and he could not have written his great history The Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire (1776–1778) without it. His library continues to attract interest and attention, and two documents held in Rare Books and Special Collections, McGill University Library and Archives, not previously known to scholars, provide new information about the books that Gibbon owned. These are an invoice from his London bookbinder, Joseph Hall, for 1773–1776, and an invoice from his Lausanne bookseller, Jules Henri Pott, for 1793. The article provides transcriptions of these two documents, examines their contents, and discusses their importance for our understanding of Gibbon’s library. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Library and Archives Canada (LAC) has what is likely the largest collection of Canadian comic books in a Canadian library. LAC’s collection has three distinct parts: comics acquired via legal deposit, the John Bell Collection of Canadian Comic Books, and the Bell Features Collection. These holdings, which span the history of the comics medium in Canada, represent a significant resource for researchers studying Canadian comics. This article looks at each of the three main parts of LAC’s comic book collection, giving an overview of the contents of each part, and providing information on how researchers can discover and access these comics. The article also briefly explores other comics-related holdings at LAC. Its purpose is to provide a starting point for researchers seeking to make use of LAC’s comic book collections. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article is the keynote speech given at the 2018 Annual Meeting of the Bibliographical Society of Canada, The Book at the Crossroads of Diversities, 28–29 May 2018, Regina, Saskatchewan. Demers reminds readers of the joys of discovering books and stories for the first time and suggests that we should not forget that joy as adults, especially those of us who have chosen careers studying stories—either books or films or theatre—rather than just loving them as we did as children. As academics, critics, librarians, and the like, we begin to read new, sometimes forgotten writers, enter into the conversation about them and, if we are lucky, work our way into the kitchen to discover how their texts are made, finding ourselves on a journey “from curiosity, to revelation, to experimentation.” [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]

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 studies the modalities of the intersection between magazines and literature in Quebec, a meeting that must be examined through a systematic lens that takes into account the entire ensemble of forms, discourses, and practices that compose the modern media regime while at the same time addressing the historicity of literary phenomena. The article pays particular attention to the actors and practices underlying discursive economy, and focuses on La Revue moderne in the 1950s, a decade that, in magazine studies, has been rarely examined and on which this article seeks to cast an illuminating light. From three groups of texts, the article seeks to show how La Revue moderne may be understood as a crucible for literature, inscribed in middlebrow culture, in which discursive practices and a variety of poetic experimentations interact with, influence, and question one another in the characteristic polyphony of the media matrix. [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]