Canada

2018 ◽  
Author(s):  
George L. Parker
Keyword(s):  
New York ◽  
English Language ◽  
Book Market ◽  
Canadian Literature ◽  
History Of ◽  
Queen's University ◽  
American Authors

This chapter discusses the history of fiction publishing in Canada since 1950. It begins with the arrival of New York publisher Alfred Knopf in Canada in August 1955, a month after the Canadian Writers' Conference was held at Queen's University in Kingston, Ontario. During the conference, the sorry plight of the English-language book scene was tackled: bookstores, for example, were dominated by British and American authors, and Canadian literature was practically ignored in schools and universities. The chapter examines how many of these complaints were resolved by the 2000s. It considers changes in Canadian fiction from traditional realism towards modernism and postmodernism, and the importance of the New Canadian Library quality paperback series (1958). It also describes other significant developments that reshaped the Canadian book market, including the emergence of independent small presses, Harlequin Enterprises, the proliferation of international conglomerates, the marketing of e-books, and the rise of Amazon.

Washington Irving

2020 ◽  
Author(s):  
Jeffrey Scraba
Keyword(s):  
United States ◽  
New York ◽  
English Language ◽  
The United States ◽  
Washington Irving ◽  
Christopher Columbus ◽  
Hudson Valley ◽  
New Amsterdam ◽  
Critical Success ◽  
History Of

Washington Irving (b. 1783–d. 1859) had a long and diverse career as an author and public figure. Irving first published satirical essays (as “Jonathan Oldstyle”) for his brother Peter’s newspaper in 1802–1803. He collaborated with his brother William and James Kirke Paulding on the 1807–1808 satirical periodical Salmagundi, which was wildly popular in New York. A History of New-York from the Beginning of the World to the End of the Dutch Dynasty (1809), narrated by the fictitious xenophobic historian Diedrich Knickerbocker, was at once an accurate history of New Amsterdam, a satire on Thomas Jefferson’s administration, and a meditation on the writing of history. Irving moved to Europe in 1815 as an agent for his brothers’ business, but after the business went bankrupt in 1818, Irving set about making a living through his writing. The Sketch-Book of Geoffrey Crayon (1819–1820) was published nearly simultaneously in installments in the United States and the United Kingdom to secure copyright in both; it was an immediate success and was lauded on both sides of the Atlantic. His attempts to follow up this initial success with similar collections of tales and sketches (Bracebridge Hall [1822] and Tales of a Traveller [1824]) met with considerably less commercial and critical success. Invited to Spain in 1824 to translate newly available documents from Columbus’ expeditions, Irving instead produced The Life and Voyages of Christopher Columbus (1828), which became the standard English-language account of Columbus and went through 175 editions in the United States and Europe. Irving’s subsequent travels in southern Spain produced A Chronicle of the Conquest of Granada (1829) and the immensely popular “Spanish Sketch-Book,” The Alhambra (1832). During this period Irving also produced a biography of the Prophet Muhammad, which was eventually published in 1849 as Mahomet and His Successors. Irving finally returned to the United States in 1832, almost immediately participating in an expedition preparing for Indian removal, which was recounted in A Tour on the Prairies (1835). John Jacob Astor then commissioned him to write Astoria (1836), a history of the fur-trading colony, while he also collected materials for another Western narrative, The Adventures of Captain Bonneville (1837). Apart from a period as American Minister to Spain (1842–1846), during which he mediated on behalf of Isabella II during the Carlist Wars, Irving spent much of the rest of his life building his Hudson Valley home called Sunnyside. His final work was the monumental five-volume Life of George Washington (1855–1859). Not only was Irving the first American writer to achieve international celebrity, but he served as a US ambassador; revived tourist interest in Andalusia; shaped the profession of authorship in America and Europe; produced the first comprehensive histories of New Amsterdam/New York, Columbus, and the founder of Islam in English; and wrote the first and perhaps best-known American short stories.

PALMIRA BRUMMETT, Image and Imperialism in the Ottoman Revolutionary Press, 1908–1911 (Albany: State University of New York Press, 2000). Pp. 489. $86.50 cloth, $29.95 paper.

2002 ◽  
Vol 34 (1) ◽  
pp. 146-148
Author(s):  
Elizabeth Thompson
Keyword(s):  
New York ◽  
English Language ◽  
State University ◽  
East Europe ◽  
Construction Of Identity ◽  
Young Turks ◽  
History Of ◽  
The Subject ◽  
Brave New World ◽  
Late Ottoman

The reader plunges into the whirlwind of revolution in this study of the satirical press that circulated after the Young Turks reinstated the Ottoman constitution in 1908. The brave new world depicted in the more than one hundred cartoons reprinted in this work is headed in unknown and often paradoxical directions: we see starving peasants confront fur-coated revolutionaries; dragon-headed despots leading Lady Liberty by the arm; cadaverous cholera victims patrolling the streets; and a woman steering an airplane above the revolutionary city of the future. The 1908 revolution will never look quite the same to readers familiar with the (still scant) treatment of the subject in the English language. Palmira Brummett addresses her innovative study not only to revisionist historians of the late Ottoman period, but also to a wider community of scholars interested in the history of publishing and the construction of identity in the Middle East, Europe, and elsewhere.

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