Jack McClelland

IMAGINING CANADIAN LITERATURE: The Selected Letters of Jack McClelland Edited by Sam Solecki

"Jack McClelland was a pioneer in Canadian publishing. In the late fifties and the sixties - at a time when many Canadians did not believe they had a literature, or if they did have one, it wasn't very good or interesting - he swung onto the scene like a swashbuckling pirate. He took chances on authors, published them with fanfare, and promoted them in daring and original ways, and he remained loyal to them..." Margaret Atwood Jack McClelland started working at his father's firm, McClelland and Stewart, in 1946. In the next forty years, he befriended, nurtured and published a galaxy of extraordinarily talented and brilliant Canadian writers whose work forms the heart of what we think of as Canadian literature. This book consists of selections from his correspondence with many of the people he published, including Margaret Laurence, Farley Mowat, Leonard Cohen, Earle Birney, Irving Layton, Mordecai Richler, Al Purdy, Gabrielle Roy and Michael Ondaatje. The letters bear witness to his friendships, his devotion to the authors he published, his sense of humour, his loyalty, his ideas about literature and the Canadian identity, as well as his sense of what makes for good publishing. Key Porter CAN/98