Over Canadian Trails: F.P. Grove in New Letters and Documents (review)

Reviewed by: Over Canadian Trails: F.P. Grove in New Letters and Documents W.J. Keith (bio) Klaus Martens, editor. Over Canadian Trails: F.P. Grove in New Letters and Documents. Königshausen & Neumann. xxxiv, 662. €56.00 In a Canada seemingly intent upon forgetting her agricultural roots, Frederick Philip Grove, who took as his primary subject prairie patriarchs and workers, and wrote a devastating critique of industrialism in The Master of the Mill, is now seldom read. Yet he was the country’s first important novelist, a writer of vision even if his reach sometimes exceeded his grasp, and also the first to take the function and artistic responsibilities of the literary life seriously. Not surprisingly, he suffered frustration and disappointment, becoming increasingly embittered and disillusioned towards the end. But some twenty-five years after his death in 1948, it was revealed by Douglas Spettigue of Queen’s University that, before coming to Canada, Grove had led a full, if hectic, artistic life under his real name, Felix Paul Greve. The last three decades have seen efforts to assimilate this fact, to unearth new biographical information and other relevant records. Klaus Martens has been the chief pioneer, and in 2001 published F.P. Grove in Europe and Canada (University of Alberta Press), the first balanced account of the complex life – or, rather, lives – of a remarkable individual. Indeed, interest in his life threatens, alas, to overshadow concern for his work. Over Canadian Trails contains new findings and offers the latest products of Martens’s researches. Part biography, part collection of letters, part photographic record, part gathering of memorabilia and even ephemera, but above all an impassioned plea for the reassessment of a currently underrated literary figure, it is best categorized, perhaps, as the latest report on an accumulating archive out of which a full portrait may, one hopes, eventually emerge. Despite its vulnerability (of which more shortly), it is an extremely important compilation. Further and valuable light is shed not merely on the German years but on his early life in Canada. A high percentage of the letters from and to Greve/Grove have never been published before – especially the correspondence with Arthur L. Phelps, Grove’s faithful friend and advocate soon after his arrival in Canada. Many of the photographs and other documents also appear for the first time and bear impressive and often moving witness to a vanished age. Their accumulation between two covers is of the utmost significance. This book is essential for all serious students of the Canadian literary situation in the first half of the twentieth century, and for all those interested in the trials and tribulations of immigrants during a crucial period of Canadian history. It has to be admitted, however, that Over Canadian Trails is not easy reading. As a collection of documents combined by the editor into [End Page 331] some sort of continuous narrative, it is intriguing yet at the same time frustrating. There are inevitable but confusing shifts back and forth in time, and awkward gaps explicable (since they indicate the absence of new information) but still puzzling, especially for beginning readers. As Canadians, we owe a debt of gratitude to a courageous German publisher for producing this book, which must have been a major undertaking. At the same time, there are many details that could be criticized. These include technical glitches, misprints, misdated letters (on p. 498, for instance), omitted and sometimes erroneous endnotes. Some necessary annotations, which could have been tracked down if the editor had regular access to a well-stocked Canadian library, are missing. Martens, of course, set himself an extraordinarily challenging task, since he was obligated to provide information familiar to properly prepared Canadian readers but unknown to his German readers – and vice versa. In addition, Grove’s own letters are often repetitious in both subject matter (poverty, misadventures with publishers, etc.) and tone (a combination of the contemptuous and the querulous). Still, what in Grovian phrase ‘needs to be said’ is that the book represents a remarkable piece of literary research. However, before tackling it, most readers would be well advised to read F.P. Grove in Europe and Canada first. Having done...

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