Corresponding Influence: Selected Letters of Emily Carr and Ira Dilworth/Always Someone to Kill the Doves: A Life of Sheila Watson

L.M. Morra (ed.), Corresponding Influence: Selected Letters of Emily Carr and Ira Dilworth (Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 2006), xiii + 339pp. Cloth. $60 (£40). ISBN 0-8020-3877-8. F.T. Flahiff, Always Someone to Kill the Doves: A Life of Sheila Watson (Edmonton: NeWest Press, 2005), x + 356pp. Paper. $34.95. ISBN 1-896300-83-9. Until recently, the 1940s and 1950s were neglected periods in English Canadian writing and cultural history, though now there is a renewed scholarly interest to which these two books on significant women figures make an important contribution. Emily Carr and Sheila Watson both celebrate 'the spirit which is native to British Columbia' (Flahiff, p. 57), from very different perspectives. Carr's paintings and autobiographical sketches in Klee Wyck (1941) belong to the coastal forest of British Columbia and Vancouver Island, while Watson's best-known novel, The Double Hook (1959), is set in the dry upland region of the Cariboo. These women were of different generations and led very different lives, yet their work inspired the devotion of two male admirers who have served their artistic interests well: Dilworth became Carr's close friend, editor, agent and literary executor in the latter part of her life, while Flahiff, Watson's biographer and trustee of her papers, was a friend for over forty years. Carr's 'Last Will and Testament' reaffirms her trust in Dilworth, while Watson's message to Flahiff accompanying her papers expresses a similar faith: 'I am sending you my life' (p. x) Carr was already famous as a painter in Canada before she met Dilworth, as Linda Morra shows in her introduction to this meticulously edited and annotated correspondence. She was also a prolific letter writer (see Dear Nan. Letters of Emily Carr, Nan Cheney and Humphrey Toms, 1990), but Dilworth was the key figure in Carr's literary life. It all began in 1940 when Dilworth, having used some of Carr's British Columbia travel sketches in his CBC radio programme, recommended that they should be published. This was the origin of Klee Wyck (Carr was seventy at this time), and he quickly assumed the role of editor and confidant, then literary agent and promoter, to such an extent that when Klee Wyck appeared, they both referred to it as 'our book'. It won the Governor-General's Award in 1942. Dilworth become devoted to Carr, and he saw through the production and publication of three of her books in her lifetime as well as three after her death in 1945, and he was preparing her journals for publication when he died in 1962. The most fascinating aspect of any correspondence is the revelation through written voices of personalities and relationships. Carr wrote frankly to Dilworth about her writing method, stating that she followed two rules: 'see the thing as clear as you can and try to show it never using big hard words where little ones will do' (p. 101). She trusted him: 'he never re-writes or re-words me' (p. 110) (not strictly true). Even more intriguing is the whimsical dimension to their relationship, for Carr created a child persona called 'Small' and appointed Dilworth as her 'Guardian'. Dilworth played this game to the end: Carr often wrote to him as Small and he replied to his 'Ward': 'Tell Emily' (p. 169). In this Lewis Carroll world, two lonely public figures found a space for loving exchange that adult decorum would never have allowed. …

Récupéré en direct depuis OpenAlex et désinversé. Les résumés ne sont pas conservés dans cette base de données : les index inversés représentent 8,6 Go des 9,3 Go de texte de la base, et le serveur dispose de 13 Go libres.