| Lancette Arts Journal Founded in 2000 |
NON-Fiction Book Reviews From our Archives |
January 2005 |
Marian Engel: a life in letters, edited by Christl Verduyn and Kathleen Garay, University of Toronto Press, $40.00, 295 pages, cloth, ISBN 0-8020-3687-2
By Alidė Kohlhaas
The 20th anniversary of the death of Marian Engel on February 16, 1985, is not far off and it is fitting that there is a new book out about her, which features correspondence she had with friends, family, and colleagues. Engel had considerable influence on the development of Canadian literature in the later part of the 20th century. Today's writers owe her much for the way in which she fought for equitable royalties for writers, among other activities, and for the recognition of writing as a worthy profession by becoming the first chairwoman of the Writers' Union of Canada.
Engel never truly achieved the heights as a novelist of which so many felt she was capable. She died far too young, at age 52, the victim of cancer. Publication of her most famous, and perhaps infamous novel, Bear, happened in 1976. It amused some, outraged others, and confirmed that she had a talent to be a great novelist. Sadly, though, she has remained largely a writers' writer, by which I mean that writers admire her work far more than the general reading public.
The University of Toronto Press has published Marian Engel - Life in Letters, edited by Christl Verduyn and Kathleen Garay. Both are very familiar with the archival material that has been collected about Engel at McMaster University, Engel's alma mater. Among Verduyn . . .
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