A History of Canadian Fiction is the first one-volume history to chart its development from earliest times to the present day. Recounting the struggles and the glories of this burgeoning area of investigation, it explains Canada's literary growth alongside its remarkable history. Highlighting the people who have shaped and are shaping Canadian literary culture, the book examines such major figures as Mavis Gallant, Mordecai Richler, Alice Munro, Margaret Atwood, Michael Ondaatje, and Thomas King, concluding with young authors of today whose major successes reflect their indebtedness to their Canadian forbearers.

Hailed as a landmark in Canadian literary scholarship when it was originally published in 1965, the Literary History of Canada is now being reissued, revised and enlarged, in three volumes. This major effort of a large group of scholars working in the field of English-language Canadian literature provides a comprehensive, up-to-date reference work. It has already proven itself invaluable as a source of information on authors, genres, and literary trends and influences. It represents a positive attempt to give a history of Canada in terms of writings which deserve attention because of significant thought, form, and use of language. Volume 3 has been newly written for this edition of the History, and covers the years from about 1960 to 1974. The contributors to this volume are Claude Bissell, Desmond Pacey, Lauriat Lane, jr, Michael S. Cross, Thomas A. Goudge, John Webster Grant, John H. Chapman, William E. Swinton, Henry B. Mayo, Malcolm Ross, Brandon Conron, Clara Thomas, Sheila A. Egoff, John Ripley, William H. New, George Woodcock, and Northrop Frye.

Hailed as a landmark in Canadian literary scholarship when it was originally published in 1965, the Literary History of Canada is now being reissued, revised and enlarged, in three volumes. This major effort of a large group of scholars working in the field of English-language Canadian literature provides a comprehensive, up-to-date reference work. It has already proven itself invaluable as a source of information on authors, genres, and literary trends and influences. It represents a positive attempt to give a history of Canada in terms of writings which deserve attention because of significant thought, form, and use of language. Volume I comprises Parts I to III of the original edition, and covers the years from the beginning of Canadian literature in English to about 1920. The contributors to this volume are David Galloway, Victor G. Hopwood, Alfred G. Bailey, Fred Cogswell, James and Ruth Talman, Carl F. Klinck, Edith Gordon Roper, Rupert Schieder, S. Ross Beharriell, Brandon Conron, Elizabeth Waterston, Alec Lucas, John A. Irving, A.H. Johnson, A. Vibert Douglas, and Frank W. Watt.

New offers an unconventionally structured overview of Canadian literature, from Native American mythologies to contemporary texts. Publishers Weekly A History of Canadian Literature looks at the work of writers and the social and cultural contexts that helped shape their preoccupations and direct their choice of literary form. W.H. New explains how - from early records of oral tales to the writing strategies of the early twenty-first century - writer, reader, literature, and society are interrelated. New discusses both Aboriginal and European mythologies, looking at pre-Contact narratives and also at the way Contact experience altered hierarchies of literary value. He then considers representations of the "real," whether in documentary, fantasy, or satire; historical romance and the social construction of Nature and State; and ironic subversions of power, the politics of cultural form, and the relevance of the media to a representation of community standard and individual voice. New suggests some ways in which writers of the later twentieth century codified such issues as history, gender, ethnicity, and literary technique itself. In this second edition, he adds a lengthy chapter that considers how writers at the turn of the twenty-first century have reimagined their society and their roles within it, and an expanded chronology and bibliography. Some of these writers have spoken from and about various social margins (dealing with issues of race, status, ethnicity, and sexuality), some have sought emotional understanding through strategies of history and memory, some have addressed environmental concerns, and some have reconstructed the world by writing across genres and across different media. All genres are represented, with examples chosen primarily, but not exclusively, from anglophone and francophone texts. A chronology, plates, and a series of tables supplement the commentary.