Despite his amply deserved reputation as the father of Southwestern Ontario Gothic, James Reaney was one of the most playful and buoyant Canadian poets publishing in the 1940s and ’50s. The Essential James Reaney presents an affordable, pocket-sized selection of the poet’s very best work.
Selected Longer Poems completes the popular presentation of James Reaney's classic Poems and includes the well-known 'The Great Lakes Suite', 'A Message to Winnipeg', 'Twelve Letters to a Small Town, ' and 'The Dance of Death at London, Ontario
Based on a true story, these three plays explore the saga of a secret society and massacre that stunned the Canadian public in 1880.-Based on a true story, these three plays explore the saga of a secret society and massacre that stunned the Canadian public in 1880.
The Box Social & Other Stories gathers together nine of James Reaney's short fictions written in the 40s and early 50s and never previously collected in book form. The collection takes its title from a short piece the author originally published in the University College Undergrad and which provoked a firestorm of eight hundred angry letters from subscribers when it was republished nationally in the New Liberty in the late 40s. It also thwarted the young author's designs on the editorship of the Undergrad because of his clear moral unsuitability for such an august position. (This is doubtful, because the Undergrad eventually came to be edited, thirty years later, by PQL publisher Tim Inkster.) `The Box Social' is remarkable, not only that it introduced the theme of date rape to Canadian literature some thirty years before the phrase was coined, but also that it is told from Sylvia's point of view, and yet again that it ends with one of the quietest lines of literary vitriol imaginable ... ` ``I hated you so much, '' she said softly.' If Alice Munro has put the sexually awakening female under glass in Lives of Girls and Women, then The Box Social could just as easily have been titled Lives of Boys and Men. In `The Bully', the brutality of what passes for etiquette in secondary school is contrasted with the simpler life of the farm personified in Noreen who drops grain in the shape of letters to feed her chickens -- `so that when the hens ate the grain they were forced to spell out Noreen's initials or to form a cross and circle. There were just enough hens to make this rather an interesting game. Sometimes, I know, Noreen spelled out whole sentences in this way, a letter or two each night, and I often wondered to whom she was writing up in the sky.' `The Bully' was included in The New Oxford Book of Canadian Short Stories edited by Margaret Atwood and Robert Weaver. The young Margaret Atwood first encountered `The Bully' as an undergraduate. She read the story, oddly enough, in an anthology edited by Robert Weaver, and the experience was apparently seminal to her own development as a writer of fiction ...
`It is a pleasure to find that James Reaney's first book for children, first published by Macmillan of Canada in 1965, has just been re-issued in a handsome paperback edition, complete with the original illustrations by Leo Rampen. The Boy with an R in His Hand tells the story of two orphan brothers who arrive in York from the Red River Settlement in 1826 and quickly become involved with the complex politics of Upper Canada. Joel, the elder brother, aligns himself with the Family Compact and his overbearing, stuffy uncle, while Alex, more imaginative and courageous, becomes an apprentice to William Lyon Mackenzie at the Colonial Advocate. There he (and the reader) learn in some detail about Mackenzie's press and the art of type-setting. Alex, rather improbably, ``had it set up right, and from that moment on his progress in the skill of type-setting was... like a house on fire.'' `This is a satisfying, fast-moving story, full of incident and detail about colonial life. It climaxes with the wrecking of Mackenzie's printshop and press by a band of young Tories acting with the implicit approval of the government, at the end of which Alex finds a single capital R, his souvenir of life as a printer's apprentice. Recommended for ages nine and up, as a piece of Canadiana which enlivens history for the young reader.' -- Marilyn Rueter, The Devil's Artisan.
The title of A Suit of Nettles was inspired by a German fairy tale. Seven suits of nettles are woven by the sister of seven brothers who have been changed into swans. When the time comes for the seven swans to put on their suits of nettles and regain human form, the arm of one suit is not finished. Consequently one brother always has one swan’s wing instead of an arm. The poem, like Spenser’s Shepherd’s Calendar, is a sequence of pastoral eclogues, one for each month of the year, but here the dialogues are not between bucolic swans, they are between Ontario geese! Although the goose-eye view is bound to be somewhat restricting there is much carefully observed detail about farm houses, spring in a small pond, summer in a pasture and the small town Ontario Fall Fair. There are some ambitious satirical wallops at the English critical school headed by F. R. Leavis, at philosophy, progressive education and Canadian history. Here is a poet who believes in merry invective. Lively, fanciful, humorous, this poem is also remarkable for its metrical ingenuity and skilful contrasts of harsh, brassy passages with mellifluous lyric. Parts of it were read on the CBC radio programme Anthology in the mid-1950s and the April Eclogue first appeared in The Tamarack Review.
James Reaney is one of Canada's favourite poets and playwrights; at the intersection of his dramatic and poetic talents is Scripts, a collection of musical writings. There are nine complete works here, including the chamber opera Night-blooming Cereus, the poetry/music collage (and Governor General's Award winner) Twelve Letters to a Small Town, the Canada Dot, Canada Dashtrilogy and operas Shivaree, Taptoo!and Serinette. Many of these pieces have been published individually, but none are in print, and they have never been amassed.
Was there ever such a family? Fired from his job at the University for letting all the mice free from their cages in the biology labs, Mr Delahay went home to find that his house was falling into the river. Moving into his mother's large, old house proved no solution. His equally large family -- two girls and four boys, three of them triplets -- were too mischievous and troublesome for his mother to stand. So she banished most of them to British Columbia where they had adventures with Sasquatches and a carwash owner named Buck whose life's dream it was to capture one of these Wild Men of the Woods. Returning to their home town in Ontario, the Delahays find that their having a home again depends on the oldest boy's skill at telling a story that will keep an eccentric old lady so interested she will let them stay with her yet one more night until she finds out how the story ends. Well, eventually, the story does have to end, but not before a great deal of hilarity and a great deal of wild adventures involving a motorbiker, a confidence woman masquerading as a baby sitter, and a leap through a Suicide Door. This is a different kind of story, filled with unexpected turns that even include a story within the story that you can try finishing yourself!
James Reaney grew up outside of Stratford, Ontario, and his keen interest in local stories and local history led to the epic and ground-breaking work, The Donnelly Trilogy, a group of plays which is highly regarded and widely taught. This book examines Reaney's major (and minor) plays, including The Killdeer for which the author won his third Governor General's Award, Colors in the Dark, the magical Listen to the Wind, and many others. It is written by his son, J. Stewart Reaney, and therefore provides a unique viewpoint on not only the plays but also the playwright.
Baldoon is a two-act play written by Governor-General's award winning author James Reaney in collaboration with Windsor area poet and journalist C.H. Gervais. This is the original edition of this title, which was honoured with an Award of Merit in the 1977 Design Canada / Look of Books competition. Baldoon is one of only two Porcupine's Quill publications from the 1970s that are still available in the original edition, at the original price.
Thank you for visiting our website. Would you like to provide feedback on how we could improve your experience?
This site does not use any third party cookies with one exception — it uses cookies from Google to deliver its services and to analyze traffic.Learn More.