A descriptive bibliography of the Canadian prairie novel, 1871-1970

Abstract

This Bibliography attempts to provide as complete an index as possible to novels of the Canadian prairie written for adults and published in English within the 100 years from 1871 to 1970. Excluded from consideration, accordingly, are the many short stories which are part of Canadian prairie fiction in general, as well as novels written for a juvenile audience. Novels written in languages other than English are included only if they were eventually published in English. To establish the literary parameters of the term "Canadian prairie" is a more difficult task. Politically, the boundaries of the Canadian prairie are clearly defined: the Canadian prairie is comprised of the provinces of Alberta, Saskatchewan, and Manitoba. These boundaries, however, were formulated subsequent to the settlement of the area geographically regarded as the prairie and in turn to the time the first novels to come from this area were written and published. Consequently, the locus of the Canadian prairie novel should be flexibly defined as the largely agricultural area bounded on the west by the Rocky Mountains, on the north and east by rocky terrain and forests, and on the south by the 49th parallel. How one should delimit the Canadian prairie novel with respect to subject matter and to the nature of a given writer's relationship to the prairie poses the second major difficulty. A novel written about the prairie by someone who was living on the prairie at the time is obviously a Canadian prairie novel; but it is also obvious that such a definition is too exacting and too mechanically restrictive. For the purposes of the present study, therefore, the Canadian prairie novel will be defined as either: a novel written by someone living on the prairie at the time regardless of subject matter or a novel with a prairie theme or setting written by someone who once lived on the prairie regardless of where the writer resided at the time of writing. The basic criterion, in short, is the writer's personal experience of living on the prairie, and thus excluded from consideration will be novels written about the prairie but by a writer who never lived or who was only a visitor there...