William Arthur Deacon, Poteen: A Pot-Pourri of Canadian Essays (Ottawa: Graphic, 1926)
In searching for information about one of our authors (Anastatia Hogan), I had occasion to go through a collection of texts by William Arthur Deacon, an eminent Canadian literary critic of the early twentieth century. I found reference to Anastatia in only one of his books (The Four Jameses), but did uncover a couple of other interesting tidbits. One is the appearance of two lists of titles at the end of Poteen: A Pot-Pourri of Canadian Essays (1926) (which, interestingly, was first copyrighted by the author in the USA in 1925, but copyrighted in Canada and published in Ottawa in 1926, but that is another story…). The first list in Poteen is “representative of Canadian literary achievement,” containing books by those authors W.A. Deacon considered important in 1926, but is “limited to books which are reasonably credible and still in print” (221). The second is a list of authors whose poems are included in a number of collections published at the time. (Perhaps this isn’t as interesting to others as it is to me, but let it be said that I have compiled an (incomplete) comparable list that I keep in an Excel spreadsheet.) In our entries for individual authors, we have included Deacon’s collection of collections, but Deacon has actually indexed all of the authors, male and female, in the following titles: (Note, though, that the editors’ names, editions, and publication dates don’t always correspond with the published texts I have held in my hands).
Broadus, E. K., and E. H. Broadus, eds. A Book of Canadian Prose and Verse (Toronto: Macmillan, 1923).
Campbell, Wilfred, ed. The Oxford Book of Canadian Verse (Toronto: Oxford UP, 1913). [Deacon has “Campbell, Logan, Oxford Book, 1913”; the 1913 edition was edited by William Wilfred Campbell alone, although John Edward Logan contributed to the collection significantly.]
Caswell, Edward S., ed. Canadian Singers and Their Songs: A Collection of Portraits, Autograph Poems and Brief Biographies. 3rd ed. (Toronto: McClelland & Stewart, 1925).
Garvin, John W., ed. Canadian Poets, 2nd ed. (Toronto: McClelland & Stewart, 1926).
Lighthall, William Douw, ed. Canadian Poems and Lays (London: Scott, [c1892]).
Rand, Theodore H., ed. A Treasury of Canadian Verse: With Brief Biographical Notes (New York: Dutton, 1900).
Watson, Albert Durrant, and Lorne Pierce, eds. Our Canadian Literature: Representative Verse, English and French (Toronto: Ryerson, 1922). [Deacon has “Watson-Pierce, Our Can Lit., 3rd ed., 1923”; the 3rd edition was actually edited by Bliss Carman and Lorne Pierce, and published in 1934.]
My list, compiled so I could determine which authors were out of copyright, and thereby know which titles I could share on our blog, includes (so far) the following titles:
Canadian Authors Association, Voices of Victory: Representative Poetry of Canada in War-time (Toronto: Macmillan, 1941).
Garvin, John W., ed. Canadian Poets, 1st ed. (Toronto: McClelland & Stewart, 1916).
Garvin, John W., ed. Canadian Poems of the Great War (Toronto: McClelland & Stewart, 1918).
Maxwell, Lillian Mary Beckwith, ed. River St. John and Its Poets (Sackville, NB: O’Brien, 1947).
Roberts, Charles G.D., ed. Flying Colours (Toronto: Ryerson, 1942).
Stephen, A.M., ed. The Golden Treasury of Canadian Verse, illustrated by E. Wallcousins. 1928 (Toronto: Dent, 1931).
“Book-List” and “Where Canadian Poets May Be Found”
Here are the pages, and the searchable pdf, from Deacon’s pot-pourri.
