READING THE FIELD OF CANADIAN POETRY IN THE ERA OF MODERNITY: THE RYERSON POETRY CHAP-BOOK SERIES, 1925-1962 by Gillian Dunks B.A. (With Distinction), Kwantlen Polytechnic University, 2011 A THESIS SUBMITTED IN PARTIAL FULFILLMENT OF THE REQUIREMENTS FOR THE DEGREE OF MASTER OF ARTS in The Faculty of Graduate Studies (English) THE UNIVERSITY OF BRITISH COLUMBIA (Vancouver) April 2013 © Gillian Dunks, 2013 ii Abstract From 1925 to 1962, the Ryerson Press published 200 short, artisanally printed books of poetry by emerging and established Canadian authors. Series editor Lorne Pierce introduced the series alongside other nationalistic projects in the 1920s in order to foster the development of an avowedly Canadian literature. Pierce initially included established Confederation poets in the series, such as Charles G.D. Roberts, and popular late-romantic poets Marjorie Pickthall and Audrey Alexandra Brown. In response to shifting literary trends in the 1940s, Pierce also included the work of modernists such as Anne Marriott, Louis Dudek, and Al Purdy. Following Pierre Bourdieu, I read the Ryerson series as a sub-field of literary production that encapsulates broader trends in the Canadian literary field in the first half of the twentieth century. The struggle between late-romantic and modernist producers to determine literary legitimacy within the series constitutes the history of the field in this period. Pierce’s decision to orient the series towards modernist innovation during the Second World War was due to late romantics’ loss of their dominant cultural position as a result of shifting literary tastes. Modernist poets gained high cultural capital in both the Ryerson series and the broader field of Canadian literary production because of their appeal to an audience of male academics whose approval ensured their legitimacy. Late-romantic poets, by contrast, lost cultural capital due to their inability to captivate an audience of academic “tastemakers” and, in some instances, due to their gender, as editors frequently framed female poets as opposed to emerging modernism to dismiss their work. My examination of Pierce’s editorial policies and the poetry in the series will re-contextualize a now-canonical Canadian modernism in relation to concurrent literary trends and will assert the importance of the chap-book genre for both late-romantic and modernist poets struggling to determine the shape of Canada’s poetry in the early to mid-twentieth century. iii Table of Contents Abstract ............................................................................................................................................... ii Table of Contents ............................................................................................................................... iii Acknowledgments .............................................................................................................................. iv Dedication ............................................................................................................................................ v 1. Introduction ...................................................................................................................................... 1 1.1 Argument Summary ................................................................................................................... 1 1.2 Defining the Chap-book ............................................................................................................. 4 1.3 Historical Contexts: The Confederation Poets and Modernism ................................................. 5 1.4 Theoretical Contexts: Bourdieu’s Field Theory ......................................................................... 8 2. Late Romanticism, 1926-1946 ...................................................................................................... 11 2.1 Lorne Pierce’s Literary Nationalism, Late Romanticism, and the Series’ Early Years ........... 11 2.3 Emerging Late-Romantics and the Threat of Modernism ........................................................ 26 2.4 Late Romantic Devaluation: Audrey Alexandra Brown .......................................................... 30 3. Modernism in the Ryerson Poetry Chap-books ............................................................................. 37 3.1 Transitions in the 1940s ........................................................................................................... 37 3.2 New Poetic Forms, New Print Genres: The Modernist Anthology and the Ryerson Press ..... 39 3.3 Anne Marriott, Modernism, and the Ryerson Chap-books ...................................................... 43 3.3 Late Romantics in the 1940s: M. Eugenie Perry ...................................................................... 55 3.5 Modernism in the Series following the Second World War .................................................... 60 4. Conclusion ...................................................................................................................................... 63 4.1 The Ryerson Press, 1960-1970 ................................................................................................ 63 4.2 Survival in the Twenty-First Century: The R. P. Frye & Co. Reprints .................................... 66 4.3 Conclusion: Framing the Ryerson Poetry Chap-book Series ................................................... 69 Works Cited ....................................................................................................................................... 71 Abbreviations ................................................................................................................................. 71 Appendices ......................................................................................................................................... 89 Appendix A: Ryerson Series List and Summary of Concurrent Chap-book Series ...................... 89 Appendix B: V.P.S. Chap-book (1925) ....................................................................................... 101 Appendix C: Ryerson Poetry Chap-book Covers ........................................................................ 103 iv Acknowledgments I am deeply thankful for the guidance and encouragement of my co-supervisors, Mary Chapman and Laura Moss. Your perceptive feedback and enthusiasm for this project made this writing experience one of the most rewarding I have ever had. I would also like to thank my committee member, Margery Fee, for your valuable advice. My sincere thanks, as well, to Sandra Campbell and Beth Pierce Robinson, whose insight about the Ryerson Press and stories about Lorne Pierce further contextualized my archival research. I am also grateful to Carole Gerson, who sparked my critical interest in the series and gave me my first copy of Flemington’s list of Ryerson Chap-books. I am grateful for the friendship of Fannina Waubert de Puiseau, Evan Choate, and Alex Thomas. Thanks for your critical acumen and humour, which often leavened the seriousness of my writing process! Finally, I acknowledge the labour of numerous librarians in the University of British Columbia’s Rare Books and Special Collections Library and Queen’s University Archives. Your tireless support made this project possible. v Dedication This thesis is dedicated to Kurtis MacKay, my mother, and my father for their love, support, and good sense of humor. 1 1. Introduction 1.1 Argument Summary In recent years, critics have attempted to complicate traditional understandings of Canadian modernism. Projects like Editing Modernism in Canada encourage the recovery of oft-ignored texts from the first half of the twentieth century and the construction of a critical apparatus with which to understand these texts. However, to consider the poetry of this period as solely “modernist” is to misread the field of Canadian literary production at this time, obscuring the struggle between late- romantic poets--writers emulating the aesthetic and thematic preoccupations of the Confederation poets--and the emerging experimental poets now classified as modernists. The struggle between these groups to determine the dominant mode of literary production characterizes the field in this period and is encapsulated in the critically neglected Ryerson Poetry Chap-book1 series. From 1925 to 1962, the Ryerson Press (the trade division of the United Church of Canada’s Publishing House) published 200 short, artisanally printed books of poetry by emerging and established Canadian authors.2 During this period, the Ryerson Chap-books were one of the main venues for poets seeking to publish new work (Parker 170). Series editor Lorne Pierce introduced the series alongside other nationalistic projects in the 1920s in order to foster the development of an avowedly Canadian literature. Pierce initially sought to include established Confederation poets including Charles G.D. Roberts (who wrote the first book in the series) and popular late-romantic poets Marjorie Pickthall and Audrey Alexandra Brown to give legitimacy to the series, yet his nationalistic fervor also led him to include the work of previously unpublished poets. Pierce’s enthusiasm for the propagation of Canadian literature led him to publish work that was sometimes derivative or poor quality, and he was criticized at the time for allowing any writer to publish a 1 I choose to employ the hyphenated spelling of “chap-book” utilized by the Ryerson Press in this period,