mlaurico

Through his long and prolific publishing career, Al Purdy helped define a “Canadian identity.” The first and only opinion-piece anthology Purdy edited was The New Romans: Candid Canadian Opinions of the United States (1968), a project he worked on with publisher Mel Hurtig. Emerging at a time when Canadian nationalism was a dominant cultural, economic, and political concern, The New Romans was perhaps Purdy’s most overtly political publishing endeavor.

The documents pertaining to Isabella Valancy Crawford’s short life and publishing career are incomplete, cryptic, and discordant, at best: some of her manuscripts were barely salvaged from use as fire kindling. Like many poets of her time, Crawford struggled to publish in Canada. Following her death, correspondence between advocates and editors of her work illuminate the cost and ambiguity of copyright at the turn of the century.