Browse "Literature"

To celebrate its 30th anniversary, The Canadian Encyclopedia created 30 lists of 30 things that make us proud to be Canadian, from famous people and historic events, to iconic foods and influential artists.

​The term “Acadian literature” is associated with literary works created by francophones in the Maritimes.

Margaret Atwood’s ninth novel, Alias Grace (1996), is a work of historical fiction that centres on the mysterious figure of Grace Marks. She was convicted in 1843 at the age of 16 for the murder of her employer, Thomas Kinnear, a wealthy Scottish Canadian, who was killed along with his housekeeper and mistress, Nancy Montgomery. Alias Grace won the Giller Prize for fiction in 1996. It was also shortlisted for a Governor General’s Award and England’s Booker Prize. In 2017, Sarah Polley adapted Atwood’s novel into a six-part CBC/Netflix miniseries, starring Sarah Gadon as Marks.

Lucy Maud Montgomery’s first novel, Anne of Green Gables (1908), became an instant bestseller and has remained in print for more than a century, making the character of Anne Shirley a mythic icon of Canadian culture. The book has sold an estimated 50 million copies worldwide, been translated into at least 36 languages, as well as braille, and been adapted more than two dozen times in various mediums. A musical version first produced by the Charlottetown Festival in 1965 is the longest running annual musical theatre production in the world, while the award-winning 1985 CBC miniseries starring Megan Follows is the most-watched television program in Canadian history. Thousands of tourists visit Prince Edward Island each year to see the “sacred sites” related to the book, and the sale of Anne-related commodities such as souvenirs and dolls has come to constitute a cottage industry.

Contemporary Canadian writers have won prestigious awards and honours at home and abroad. Among the most publicized of these events was Prix Goncourt awarded to Antonine Maillet for Pélagie-la-Charette.

Letters, journals, diaries, memoirs and autobiographies are all ways of saying to the reader, "I was there.

The golden age of personal literature (littérature intime) in the Western world occurred in the late 18th and early 19th centuries. Examples of the genre are not found in Québec before the mid-19th century.

The film Barney's Version (2010), produced by Robert Lantos and directed by Richard J. Lewis, takes on the challenge of adapting Mordecai Richler's unruly onslaught of a final novel.

Bear, by Marian Engel (Toronto, 1976), winner of the Governor-General's Award, has been called the most controversial novel ever written in Canada because of its heroine's erotic relationship with a bear.

Beautiful Losers (Toronto and New York, 1966; London, 1970) is a novel by Leonard Cohen.

Bonheur d'occasion or The Tin Flute (1945), novel by Gabrielle Roy. Set in the Montréal slum of St-Henri during WWII, it is French Canadian literature's first example of urban realism.

Canada's first book club was started in 1928 when the T. Eaton Company LTD offered its customers "a selective literary service." A committee of literary authorities made a monthly selection of titles - sold to the membership at an average price of $2.

ARS LONGA, VITA BREVIS. The Roman poet Horace's familiar words, that life is short but art is forever, have been a writer's maxim for 2,000 years.This article was originally published in Maclean's Magazine on April 28, 2003

This was supposed to come from the horse's mouth. It was all lined up, a rare interview with old crazy horse himself.This article was originally published in Maclean's Magazine on May 13, 2002

Books in Canada (fd 1971) was a book review magazine distributed by subscription and sold in book stores and newsstands throughout English-speaking Canada; before it went on hiatus in early 2008, it appeared 9 times a year.