Canada has two literatures—one in English and one in French. Both English and French are official languages of Canada. Each is spoken by millions of people and owes its use to historical circumstances.

Early French Narratives of Exploration

The journals of Jacques Cartier and Samuel de Champlain tell of the powerful feelings aroused by the New World, which, Champlain wrote, was “beautiful even to perfection.” Cartier's Voyages was printed in French in 1598. It was translated into English in 1600, appearing in a revised edition of Richard Hakluyt's Principall Navigations (see Hakluyt, Richard). This book also told the story of voyages to Canada by John Cabot, Richard Hore, Sir Martin Frobisher, Sir Humphrey Gilbert, and John Davis. Some of the works of Champlain were published in France in 1603. In 1625 they were printed in an English translation by Samuel Purchas. This book, Purchas His Pilgrimes, also presented an abridged English version of Marc Lescarbot's Histoire de la Nouvelle-France (History of New France), published in 1609.

A notable book translated into English was Father Louis Hennepin's Nouveau Voyage (1696), published in London in 1698 as Journal of a Voyage to North America. There is no English translation of the 17th-century Relations of the Jesuits, whose activities have become a national legend, nor of the Lettres (1681) of Marie de l'Incarnation, founder of the Ursuline Convent in Quebec.

The First Newspapers in French Canada

Even after the first printing presses were set up in Quebec city in 1764 and in Montreal in 1766, many years passed before noteworthy literary achievements could be credited to French Canada. Learning was the province of the clergy. Few books were printed, and literary activity was centered principally in the newspapers. The Gazette de Québec was founded in 1764, the Montreal Gazette in 1778, Le Canadien in 1806, and Le Spectateur in 1813. A struggle for responsible government and cultural identity brought a burst of nationalism in the 1830s. This was heralded by Étienne Parent, who composed this inscription for his Le Canadien: “Our institutions, our language and our laws.”

Start of Canadian Literature in English

From 1760 to 1830 the English Canadians, like the French Canadians, were absorbed in agriculture, war, politics, trade, and immigration. John Bushell, a Boston printer, opened a printing shop in Halifax, N.S., in 1752. He founded the Halifax Gazette in the same year. John Howe arrived with the press of the Boston News-Letter during the migration of American colonists loyal to Great Britain during the American Revolution. He established the Halifax Journal in 1781 and was the first printer and subsequently the editor of the Loyalist review The Nova-Scotia Magazine (1789–92).

The History of Emily Montague (1769), with Quebec as its setting, was written by Frances Brooke, the wife of the Quebec garrison chaplain. It was certainly the first novel originating in Canada and probably also the first North American novel. In the Far West, fur traders and travelers were writing accounts of their journeys. Outstanding were Sir Alexander Mackenzie's Voyages from Montreal Through the Continent of North America (1801) and Alexander Henry's Travels and Adventures in Canada (1809).

Relations between the Canadians, English, Americans, and Indians provided a wealth of material for early Canadian writers. Major John Richardson used this material in both fiction and nonfiction works. His novel Wacousta (1832) tells of an Indian uprising in 1763–64, and his War of 1812 (1842) recounts his experiences in that war.

Official support by the governor-general helped make the city of Quebec the literary center of Canada, especially after James Ramsay, earl of Dalhousie, founded the Literary and Historical Society of Quebec in 1824. In Montreal three literary journals of note were The Scribbler (1821–27), The Canadian Magazine (1823–25), and The Canadian Review (1824–26).

John Galt, the Scottish novelist and superintendent of the Canada Company, a land-colonizing project in Upper Canada, wrote two novels while in Canada, Lawrie Todd (1830) and Bogle Corbet (1831). His friend William (Tiger) Dunlop wrote humorous reminiscences of the War of 1812, and he burlesqued immigrant handbooks in Statistical Sketches of Upper Canada (1832). Catherine Parr Traill gave an account of bush settlement in her popular Backwoods of Canada (1836). Her sister, Susanna Moodie, in Roughing It in the Bush (1852), made a form of fiction out of settlers' experiences and anecdotes. (See also Galt, John; Moodie, Susanna.)

In Halifax Thomas McCulloch's witty sketches of social criticism were compiled in The Stepsure Letters (1821–23). Joseph Howe, son of newspaperman John Howe, encouraged the spread of a literary culture by publishing literature and travel writing in the Nova Scotian.

One notable book was The Clockmaker; or, the Sayings and Doings of Samuel Slick, of Slickville, published in Halifax in 1836. The author was Thomas Chandler Haliburton, a Nova Scotia judge. With a masterly command of dialogue Haliburton created the character of a Yankee clock peddler. Smart and aggressive, Sam Slick is in sharp contrast to the indolent and naïve Nova Scotians with whom he deals. (See also Haliburton, Thomas Chandler.)

In Quebec, English-Canadian writers imitated British patterns of gentility and U.S. fashions. Such a tone was given to The Literary Garland (1838–51), a Montreal journal. It eventually succumbed to the rival U.S. ladies' magazines.

The poet Charles Sangster wrote in the style of the English Romanticists and early Victorians. A strange, solitary wood-carver of Montreal, Charles Heavysege, achieved some reputation with Saul (1857) and other Elizabethan poetic dramas. (See also Heavysege, Charles.)

French-Canadian Literature to 1920

The spark set by Parent in French Canada blazed forth when François-Xavier Garneau wrote Histoire du Canada (1845–48). John George Lambton, earl of Durham, had described Garneau's people as having “no literature and no history.” Garneau attested to and recorded their history, and their literature began to flourish, largely inspired by that history. Octave Crémazie was one of the first poets to respond to the challenge. (See also Crémazie, Octave.)

The literature from 1860 to 1920 reflected an expanding Canada whose very size encouraged regionalism. French-Canadian Quebec constituted a region, and historical works of its romantic and heroic past offered an attractive way of revealing its identity. Among the poets who wrote of this romantic past was Louis Fréchette. La Légende d'un peuple (1887; The Story of a People) is his epic of French Canada. Léon Pamphile Lemay was a true singer of rural life. He translated Henry Wadsworth Longfellow's Evangeline in his Essais Poétiques (1865; Poetic Essays). (See also Fréchette, Louis Honoré; Lemay, Pamphile.)

Novelists Philippe Aubert de Gaspé, in Les Anciens Canadiens (1863; The Canadians of Old), and Antoine Gérin-Lajoie, in Jean Rivard (1862–64), also dealt with French-Canadian history and the life of the people. For many of these writers their interest in the past was related to their strong faith in religion. Several influential writers of the period, including Jean Baptiste Ferland, Henri Raymond Casgrain, and Camille Roy, were Roman Catholic priests. Other writers, such as Laure Conan (the pen name of Félicité Angers), broke away from this tradition.

In 1895 a new literary movement was founded as a reaction against the traditionalists. The poets of the Montreal School, including Émile Nelligan, Albert Lozeau, and Jean Charbonneau, were influenced by writers in France at the time. (See also Conan, Laure; Gaspé, Philippe Aubert de; Lozeau, Albert; Roy, Camille.)

English-Canadian Fiction, 1860–1920

English-Canadian writings between 1860 and 1920 were also largely regional. The short stories and novels of Sir Gilbert Parker, who was born and educated in eastern Ontario, brought him fame and honors as a writer of romances. His Canadian tales included Pierre and His People (1892), which treated the Far North in a poetic style.

Ralph Connor (Charles W. Gordon) was born at Indian Lands, Glengarry County, Ontario, a country he made memorable with his Glengarry School Days (1902). A minister in Winnipeg, Man., for many years, he also wrote Western novels with a strong religious purpose, especially Black Rock (1898) and The Sky Pilot (1899).

Other popular writers were associated with regions in eastern Canada. Among these was (Margaret) Marshall Saunders, a native of Nova Scotia. She wrote Beautiful Joe (1894). Lucy Maud Montgomery, born on Prince Edward Island, wrote Anne of Green Gables (1908) and its sequels, beloved by several generations of girls. Norman Duncan's Doctor Luke of the Labrador (1904) was popular among boys. Nature and its wild creatures were subjects for a major Canadian contribution to literature. The Kindred of the Wild (1902), by Charles G.D. Roberts, rivaled in popularity Ernest Thompson Seton's Wild Animals I Have Known (1898). (See also Montgomery, Lucy Maud; Roberts, Charles G.D.; Seton, Ernest Thompson.)

English-Canadian Poetry, 1867–1920

The poets who wrote in English from 1867 to 1920 had readers beyond the borders of Canada, especially in United States periodicals. Charles G.D. Roberts was known for poems of New Brunswick. His first book, Orion and Other Poems, was published in 1880. Roberts, Bliss Carman, Archibald Lampman, and Duncan Campbell Scott mark the Golden Age, or Confederation Era, in Canadian literature. Carman helped start a revolt against the popular pale and bookish poetry. Much of his own verse—in such collections as Low Tide on Grand Pré (1893) and Songs from Vagabondia (1894)—glows with the vigor of the outdoors. (See also Carman, Bliss.)

Ontario-born Archibald Lampman was dramatically won over to the new Canadianism by Roberts' Orion, which he said he read “in a state of the wildest excitement.” In the Canadian woods he found peace and a refuge from his labors as a civil servant. There also he found themes for his nature poems.

Duncan Campbell Scott discovered his subjects in the harshness of nature—in Canada's cold and snowbound winters and in the gloom and solitude of its forests. Some of his best poetry is about Native Americans, whom he had met through his work in the Federal Department of Indian Affairs. In contrast to his realistic writing are his “dream” pieces. Scott was also a skilled short-story writer. In the Village of Viger (1896) is a fine collection of stories representing French-Canadian life.

The poet Isabella Valancy Crawford, daughter of Irish pioneers, depicted backwoods life in Ontario in Old Spookses' Pass, Malcolm's Katie, and Other Poems (1884). The success of William Henry Drummond's The Habitant and Other French-Canadian Poems (1897) was partly due to his skill in handling the dialect. Robert W. Service, famous for his Songs of a Sourdough (1907) and Ballads of a Cheechako (1909), portrayed the Yukon in the gold rush of 1898. The Trail of '98 (1910) is a vivid novel about the Klondike. Pauline Johnson, part-Mohawk poet and storyteller, wrote about the people of the Six Nations and the Pacific coast. Her Flint and Feather (1912) is still popular. (See also Crawford, Isabella Valancy; Drummond, William Henry; Johnson, Pauline.)

Notable among the next generation were two poets principally associated with Toronto. Marjorie Lowry Pickthall composed intricately woven colorful works suggesting the Celtic rather than the contemporary modes of her native England. Wilson MacDonald's lyrics are warm, fanciful, and satirical. (See also MacDonald, Wilson Pugsley.)

Bridging the Two Cultures

Poetry reaches only a small audience, and its translation is often unsatisfactory. Thus Canada's two language groups knew little of each other's poetry. The rise of the novel, however, helped bridge the gap between the two literatures, for most novels can be effectively translated. One such outstanding novel was The Golden Dog (1877), written by British-born William Kirby. It is a historical romance of Quebec during the 1700s. It was translated into French as Le Chien d'or, by Léon Pamphile Lemay. (See also Kirby, William.)

Another book that was highly successful in both languages was the French-Canadian classic Maria Chapdelaine (1915), written by French-born Louis Hémon. While writing his romance, he worked for a farmer in the Quebec village of Péribonka. In this simple story of French-Canadian farm life the round of daily tasks and ordinary events is made important by deeply felt emotions. It is a regional novel with universal appeal. English readers know the book through William Hume Blake's translation. (See also Hémon, Louis.)

French Literature Between the World Wars

The famous World War I poem In Flanders Fields (1919) was written by a Montreal doctor, Lieut. Col. John McCrae. The period between the two world wars (1918–39) brought changes in literature. Although the preoccupation of the French-Canadian writers with history and religion did not diminish, the literature contained more social awareness and personal expression.

During this period one group of poets, including Charles Gill and later Alfred Desrochers and Claude-Henri Grignon, continued to write regional poetry. Others, such as Paul Morin and Marcel Dugas, were influenced by contemporary French culture.

The French-Canadian novel showed a deeper concern with social, economic, and psychological problems. The most significant novelists were Léo-Paul Desrosiers, Robert Choquette, and Ringuet (pen name of Philippe Panneton).

English Literature Between the World Wars

One of the most notable English-Canadian writers of this period was Stephen Leacock, a professor of political science and economics at McGill University in Montreal. He published his first book of humor, Literary Lapses, in 1910 and continued writing until his death in 1944. Readers in all English-speaking countries know his many amusing and candid sketches of people, books, and institutions. Sunshine Sketches of a Little Town is usually considered to be his masterpiece. (See also Leacock, Stephen.)

Mazo de la Roche won international fame with her charming series of novels about the Whiteoak family, beginning with Jalna (1927). Morley Callaghan's work, including Strange Fugitive (1928) and The Loved and the Lost (1951), was warmly received by the Canadian public. Frederick Philip Grove, an earnest realist with a talent for essays of prairie life, achieved only limited popular success with A Search for America (1927), Our Daily Bread (1928), Fruits of the Earth (1933), and other novels.

In Montreal, poets of the McGill Group published an anthology of their works, entitled New Provinces (1936). It indicated a concern about social welfare and an opposition to Fascism. Among the group were A.J.M. Smith, critic, anthologist, and poet, whose verse has been characterized as “difficult, lonely music”; Francis R. Scott (editor of New Provinces), noted for his social criticism; and A.M. Klein, perhaps best represented by the prose and verse of his novel The Second Scroll (1951), which made imaginative use of Jewish lore. Dorothy Livesay, whose Selected Poems was published in 1956, was also a member of the group. Many of the best poems of Earle Birney, a product of the Far West, deal with World War II.

Edwin J. Pratt revealed his social and moral convictions largely through allegory, as in The Witches' Brew (1925) and The Titanic (1935). The conflict between good and evil is in all of Pratt's work, especially in Brébeuf and His Brethren (1940), a narrative poem that brought him acclaim as one of Canada's finest poets. (See also Pratt, E.J.)

Poetry in the Second Half of the 20th Century

After World War II many new poets won recognition. Those who wrote in French include Alain Grandbois and Anne Hébert. Robert Finch of Toronto, who was first introduced in New Provinces, wrote subtle, sensuous poems. Patrick Anderson became the center of a short-lived group in Montreal in the early 1940s. Patricia Kathleen Page, noted for her ironic social studies and imagery, was a member of the group. Kay Smith, Miriam Waddington, and Louis Dudek also wrote in Montreal; and Ronald Hambleton in Toronto. Dudek, a poet and critic, joined Irving Layton in editing the collection Canadian Poems 1850–1952 (1952). Raymond Souster of Toronto was another leader in social realism, and Leonard Cohen also wrote directly of social and personal experience. George Johnston was noted for his tolerant and gently disturbing humor. Charles Bruce and Fred Cogswell are identified with Nova Scotia and New Brunswick, and Anne Marriott with the prairies. Poets who shared an interest in mythmaking, imagery, song, and fantasy include James Reaney, Jay Macpherson, and Margaret Avison.

French-language literature after 1960 was strongly influenced by the social-political upheaval that took place in Quebec (see Quebec, section on history). Themes of separatism and rediscovery of the region's heritage were found in both poetry and fiction. Among the significant poets were Paul-Marie Lapointe, Jacques Brault, Gaston Miron, Fernand Ouellette, Michel Van Schendel, Michèle Lalonde, Claude Gauvreau, and Nicole Brossard.

After the mid-1980s, however, a more lyrical style typified the approach of poets such as François Charron and Michel Beaulieu. Some poets, including Denise Desautels, Elise Turcotte, and Louise Dupré, combined poetry with prose narrative. No longer the main vehicle for the expression of collective identity, poetry nevertheless remains a vital mode of expression for French-Canadians.After the World War II, poetry in English was also fueled by a resurgence of nationalism. Many of Canada's novelists, including Margaret Atwood, Michael Ondaatje, George Bowering, Robert Kroetsch, and Leonard Cohen, were poets first. Al Purdy displayed a fascination with history and place. Poets such as Avison, Phyllis Webb, D.G. Jones, and Don Coles grappled with mystical concerns. Anne Carson, in such works as Autobiography of Red (1998) and The Beauty of the Husband (2001), intermixed ancient voices with contemporary ones.

Fiction in the Second Half of the 20th Century

The French psychological novel continued in the work of Robert Charbonneau, Robert Elie, André Giroux, Jean Filiatrault, and André Langevin. Other writers of French-Canadian fiction were Yves Thériault, Jean-Jules Richard, Pierre Baillargeon, and Jean Simard.

An English writer with conservative tendencies was Hugh MacLennan. He wrote Barometer Rising (1941), Two Solitudes (1945), and The Watch That Ends the Night (1959). (See also MacLennan, Hugh.)

Some of Canada's best French novels have been translated into English. They include Gabrielle Roy's Bonheur d'occasion (1945; The Tin Flute) and Alexandre Chenévert (1952; The Cashier); Roger Lemelin's Au Pied de la pente douce (1944; The Town Below), Les Plouffe (1948; The Plouffe Family), and Pierre le magnifique (1952; In Quest of Splendour); Germaine Guèvremont's Le Survenant (1950; The Outlander); and Marie-Claire Blais's La Belle Bête (1959; Mad Shadows). (See also Roy, Gabrielle.)

In the early 1960s new and unconventional themes and structures emerged in the Canadian novel. The “new novel” in Quebec began with Jacques Godbout's L'Aquarium (1962) and reached a high point in the novels of Hubert Aquin, beginning with Prochain Épisode (1965). In Hail, Galarneau! (1967), Godbout described the Americanization of Quebec. Poet Anne Hébert gained fame with her historical novel Kamouraska (1970) and won the Prix Fémina for her Les Fous de Bassan (1982; In the Shadow of the Wind) and the Governor General's Award in 1992 for L'enfant chargé de songes (Burden of Dreams). The experimentalist Gérard Bessette moved from ironic realism in his early novels to a symbolic type of narrative in Les Anthropoïdes (1977). The success of Yves Beauchemin's Le Matou (1981; The Alley Cat) and Arlette Cousture's historical novel Les Filles de Caleb (2 vols., 1985-86) suggested a return of the plot-driven narrative. At the end of the century, following the defeat of two referendums on the separation of Quebec from the rest of Canada, fiction tended to forego the political for the personal statement. As a result, many diaries, autobiographical novels, and epistolary novels were published. Short stories and novellas became increasingly prominent.

The range of English-language fiction in Canadian literature was quite broad, but the themes for the most part dealt with contemporary issues. Alice Munro in short-story collections such as Who Do You Think You Are? (1978; also published as The Beggar Maid: Stories of Flo and Rose) and Margaret Laurence in The Stone Angel (1964), A Jest of God (1966), and The Diviners (1974) explore the problems women face in the confining atmospheres of small towns. In Hateship, Friendship, Courtship, Loveship, Marriage (2001), Munro continued to depict the domestic lives of women, but in an increasingly enigmatic style.

Robertson Davies dealt with Canadian provincialism and human psychology, notably in his three trilogies: the Salterton trilogy of the 1950s, the Deptford trilogy (Fifth Business [1970], The Manticore [1972], and World of Wonders [1975]), and the Cornish trilogy (The Rebel Angels [1981], What's Bred in the Bone [1985], and The Lyre of Orpheus [1988]). Urban life and politics were analyzed by Margaret Atwood in Surfacing (1972), Lady Oracle (1976), Bodily Harm (1981), and The Handmaid's Tale (1985). Atwood's masterful Alias Grace (1996) and The Blind Assassin (2000) explore the slipperiness of truth and justice. Mordecai Richler's novels The Apprenticeship of Duddy Kravitz (1959), St. Urbain's Horseman (1971), Joshua Then and Now (1980), Solomon Gursky Was Here (1989), and Barney's Version (1997) satirize the condition of modern society.

Experimental fiction grew popular beginning in the 1970s. Jack Hodgins created a modern utopia in The Invention of the World (1977). Audrey Thomas dealt with the problems of modern women's lives in the short stories in Real Mothers (1981) and in her novels Latakia (1979) and Intertidal Life (1984). Robert Kroetsch created postmodern parodies of the quest journey in The Studhorse Man (1969) and Badlands (1975). The Temptations of Big Bear (1973) and The Scorched-Wood People (1977) were epic historical novels by Rudy Wiebe. Another historical novel was George Bowering's Burning Water (1980), based on the life of the 18th-century explorer George Vancouver. Michael Ondaatje's Coming Through Slaughter (1976), the story of jazz musician Buddy Bolden, mixes history and autobiography. In books ranging in setting from 1920s Toronto (In the Skin of a Lion, 1987) to Tuscany at the end of World War II (The English Patient, 1992) to Sri Lanka in the 1980s (Anil's Ghost, 2000), Ondaatje examined such issues as loyalty, betrayal, and identity.

Despite a persistent interest in innovation, some Canadian writers preferred regional fiction, among them David Adams Richards (New Brunswick), Guy Vanderhaeghe (the Prairies), Richard Wright (small-town Ontario), and Ann-Marie MacDonald and Alistair McLeod (Cape Breton Island). Beginning in the 1980s many minority writers wrote of the difficulty of negotiating two cultures, facing prejudice, and dealing with splintered families and cultures. Among these were Jeanette Armstrong, Beatrice Culleton, Thomas King, Lee Maracle, and Eden Robinson. The immigrant experience also became a significant topic, as treated by Nino Ricci, Nancy Huston, Joy Kogawa, Hiromi Goto, Wayson Choy, Rohinton Mistry, Makeda Silvera, and Anita Rau Badami.