Historical Perspectives on Canadian Publishing
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Historical Perspectives on Canadian Publishing
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  • Publishing Houses and the Periodical Press
  • People in Publishing
  • Authors and Their Publishers
  • The Business of Publishing
  • Production (Design, Illustration, Technology)
  • Publishing and Canadian Identity
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Publishing is more than just a business in which books and periodicals are brought to the marketplace and sold to the public, like so many other commodities. Publishing is a cultural force in society that depends on the energy and creative drive of individuals (publishers, editors, and other staff) to sustain and develop a company’s unique character in the production and development of salable books by a reliable stable of authors for an interested audience. “I publish authors, not books,” was Jack McClelland’s credo. Although his company, McClelland & Stewart (M&S) sometimes teetered on the verge of bankruptcy, his panache inspired a new generation of publishers. He and many other people transformed the nature of publishing in Canada: the Neilsons of Quebec City; Lorne Pierce of the Ryerson Press; Hugh Eayrs, John Gray, and Gladys Neale of the Macmillan Company of Canada; Anna Porter of M&S and Key Porter Books; Douglas M. Gibson of Macmillan of Canada and M&S; Alan Crawley and Contemporary Verse; Stan Bevington of Coach House Press; jwcurry of Curvd H&z; and fine press publisher, Margaret Lock, of the Locks’ Press. For these people and many others in publishing, their contribution and dedication represent a life’s work.

Case studies:

  • Stan Bevington: The Making of a Master Printer with Audio Interview
  • H. Pearson Gundy, Upper Canada's Publishing Historian
  • Hugh Kane: "The Compleat Bookman"
  • Jack McClelland and McClelland & Stewart
  • Catching Sight of the Battle: Gladys Neale's Rise to the Top of Educational Publishing (with audio recording)
  • Lorne Pierce of the Ryerson Press and Vera Lysenko’s Men in Sheepskin Coats (1947): Resisting the “Red Scare”
  • “The Queen Bee of the Canadian Book Trade”: Anna Porter and Key Porter Books
  • Douglas Gibson Books and Alice Munro, with Editorial Audio Recordings by Douglas Gibson
  • J.W. Bengough: Publisher and Pioneer of Editorial Cartooning in English Canada
  • Locks’ Press, the private press of Fred and Margaret Lock, Kingston, Ontario: A Personal Narrative
  • Cashbook contributions to the biographies of publishers George Maclean Rose and Daniel Rose
  • The Perilous Trade Collection, with Audio Interviews

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This website was made possible by the Canadian Culture Online Program of the Department of Canadian Heritage, Library and Archives Canada and the Canadian Council of Archives


Overview
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