In Their Own Words: Prefaces and Other Sites of Editorial Interaction in Nineteenth-Century Canadian Magazines Suzanne Bowness Thesis submitted to the Faculty of Graduate and Postdoctoral Studies In Partial Fulfilment of the Requirements For the PhD Degree in English Literature Department of English Faculty of Arts University of Ottawa © Suzanne Bowness, Ottawa, Canada, 2012 TABLE OF CONTENTS Abstract…………………………………………………………………………………..iv Acknowledgements……………………………………………………………………...vi Introduction………………………………………………………………………………1 Chapter 1: Context and Historical Overview of Canadian Magazines.…………….13 Foreign Models for Canadian Magazines….…………………………………….15 A Canadian Industry is Born……………………………………………………..18 A Quiet Beginning: Magazines to the Mid-1820s………………………….……22 Lots of Enthusiasm, Little Longevity: Magazines in the 1830s…………………29 Literary Development, Specialization, and Experimentation in the 1840s……...39 The Quieter 1850s………………………………………………………………..44 Towards Confederation…………………………………………………………..49 Approaching a Golden Age: Magazines Around the 1870s……………………..53 An Industry at Last: the 1880s and 1890s………………………………………..56 Chapter 2: Themes in Canadian Magazine Prefaces…………………………………67 An Exemplary Preface: The Nova-Scotia Magazine …………………………….70 Civic Betterment to National Pride………………………………………………74 Variations on the Nationalist Theme: British, Regional, and Literary…………..87 Negative Threads: Indifference, Anti-Americanism and Trashy Literature….….96 Literature for the People………………………..……...……………………….110 Practical Concerns……………………………………………………………...115 Chapter 3: Rhetoric in Canadian Magazine Prefaces………………………………119 Literary Tools in Aid of the Editorial and Magazine Persona ………………....120 Shared Concerns for a Lost Literary Aspirant………………………………….137 Do We Want a Good Canadian Magazine? Rhetorical Questions and More…..150 Creative Writing Beyond the Prefaces………………………………………….154 A Final Note of Scepticism……………………………………………………..158 Chapter 4: Sites of Editorial Interaction in Canadian Magazines…………………161 A Few Sample “Notices to Correspondents” in Full…………………………...170 Practice Makes Perfect: Poetical Critiques and Prose Grievances……………..177 Explaining the Editorial Process………………………………………………..195 Reader to Reader and the Editor’s Meditation...………………………………..214 Chapter 5: Canadian Magazinists……………………………………………………218 The Early Period to Mid-Century…………………………………………...….221 Susanna Moodie Rosanna Leprohon Successful but Obscure Magazinists……………………………………………233 Charles Durand Diana Bayley W. Arthur Calnek Amelia Clotilda Jennings Promising Trajectories Cut Short……………………………………………….242 Samuel Douglass Smith Huyghue Hugh E. Montgomerie Elizabeth Mary Maclachlan James Haskins Mysterious Disappearances…………………………………………………….249 Eliza Lanesford Cushing Mary Jane Katzmann Lawson Mid- to Late-Century Magazinists………………………………………..……256 Contributors to The Canadian Monthly and National Review Contributors to The Week Other Late-Century Magazines Magazinists’ Reputations Beyond the Magazines……………………………...273 Conclusion……………………………………………………………………………..276 Works Cited……………………………………………………………………………284 iv ABSTRACT This dissertation investigates nineteenth-century Canadian literary and general interest periodicals through the prefaces and other editorial missives written by the editors who created them. It seeks to demonstrate how these cultural workers saw their magazines as vehicles for promoting civic and literary development. While the handful of previous Canadian magazine dissertations take a “snapshot” approach to the genre by profiling a handful of titles within a region, this study attempts to capture the editorial impulse behind magazine development more widely. To do so, it examines multiple titles over a wider geographical and chronological span. To provide context for these primary documents, the dissertation begins with a chapter that summarizes the development of magazines as a genre and the history of publishing in nineteenth-century Canada. Subsequent chapters examine prefaces by theme as well as by rhetorical strategy. Themes such as nationalism, cultural development, and anti-Americanism emerge most prominently, alongside rhetorical techniques such as metaphor, imagery, analogy and personification. The dissertation also examines other sites of editorial interaction, most commonly the “correspondent’s columns,” where editors provided public feedback on topics ranging from versification to currency to prose style as a means of educating writers and readers alike. Finally, the dissertation relies on existing indexes to identify some of the most prolific contributors to the magazines, considering how these writers used the magazines to boost their literary careers. In the early century, these sources verify the productivity of canonical writers such as Susanna Moodie and Rosanna Leprohon, and call attention to obscure writers such as Eliza Lanesford Cushing, W. Arthur Calnek, James Haskins, and v Mary Jane Katzmann Lawson. In the later century, the same approach is used again to examine the hive of writers who emerged to contribute to late century magazines like The Canadian Monthly and National Review and The Week , confirming the immense productivity of writers such as Agnes Maule Machar and drawing attention to now- obscure contributors like Mary Morgan. By recovering these overlooked editorial elements and figures, this dissertation draws scholarly attention to a more nuanced view of literary production and affirms the importance of magazines to literary development in nineteenth-century Canada. vi ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS This dissertation owes much to many people. I would like to thank my supervisor Dr. Janice Fiamengo for her kind mentorship, encouragement, enthusiasm, and careful editing throughout the entire project. I am grateful for the feedback and interest of my examiners Dr. Tracey Ware, Dr. Gerald Lynch, Dr. Seymour Mayne, and Dr. Cynthia Sugars, who encouraged me to think about ways to expand my project. I also appreciate the insights and advice that I gained from other professors at the English Department, whether as a student in their classes, or in casual conversation. I furthermore appreciated the kindness of the department’s administrative staff. Since I did not think to include an acknowledgements page in my MA thesis, I would also like to thank my supervisors at York University, Dr. Ray Ellenwood and Dr. John Lennox. I would also like to thank my fellow students in the graduate community, and particularly the handful who joined me in creating a “thesis club” to support each other through the dissertation writing: Jenn Macquarrie, Poonam Bajwa, Bonnie Hughes, Marissa McHugh, Carmela Coccimiglio, and Marla Arbach. Our many sessions in the library sharing ideas made this whole undertaking more manageable. Finally, I would like to thank my parents William and Sandra Bowness, my brother Robert, and my friends for their constant support. I am pleased to acknowledge the financial support I received from the Ontario Graduate Scholarship and the University of Ottawa. I am grateful for the digitization project at Early Canadiana Online that made a project of this scope much more feasible. This thesis is dedicated to the workers of the Canadian magazine industry, past and present. INTRODUCTION By way of introducing “A Study of Canadian Periodical Literature of the Nineteenth Century” (1950), a dissertation that he describes as an “initial assault” on the field, Robert L. McDougall notes that “the thought and tastes of the nineteenth century are recorded nowhere more liberally, nowhere with greater comprehensive accuracy, than in the periodical literature of the time” (1). In his excellent study of five of the era’s most significant periodicals, The Literary Garland , The Canadian Journal, The Anglo- American Magazine, The British American Magazine, and The Canadian Monthly and National Review , McDougall substantiates his assertion by revealing how each magazine’s contents, publication efforts, and literary criticism supplied a home-grown forum for intellectual debate and literary taste-making. Unfortunately, his initial assault has not been adequately sustained. While a handful of scholars have followed McDougall’s lead to produce further excellent profiles, the number of magazines worth investigating far outweighs the number of existing studies. Nor does the field yet have a satisfactory overview that explores nineteenth-century Canadian magazines directly as a genre and an industry rather than tangentially in relation to some other literary investigation. A lack of scholarly regard for magazines is not a particularly Canadian oversight. In his essay “Victorian Periodicals and Academic Discourse,” in Laurel Brake, Aled Jones and Lionel Madden’s Investigating Victorian Journalism, B.E. Maidment calls the dearth of work on the magazine genre a “startling absence.” He adds that there is also an overwhelming sense that “there is almost no attention paid to Victorian periodicals in 2 themselves, though many articles and essays depend on evidence drawn from periodicals to substantiate, illustrate or reinforce arguments constructed out of other kinds of scholarly evidence” (143).1 Canada follows this pattern too: whereas scholars seem aware of magazines as a repository, little attention is given them as a genre. This dissertation, therefore, arises from a desire to find new ways to continue McDougall’s assault, and to verify that the magazines of early Canada were more than passive repositories for creative work. Instead they were vehicles