The Emily Carr Omnibus

Patricia Morley is professor emeritus of English and Canadian studies at
Concordia University and the author of Margaret Laurence: The Long
Journey Home and As Though Life Mattered: Leo Kennedy’s Story.

In the public mind, Emily Carr’s writing has always taken second place
to her magnificent paintings. Her achievements in this other art,
however, are substantial. The Emily Carr Omnibus includes all her major
published works: Klee Wyck, The Book of Small, The House of All Sorts,
Growing Pains: An Autobiography, The Heart of a Peacock, Pause: A Sketch
Book, and Hundreds and Thousands, her journals.

Curator and writer Doris Shadbolt authored The Art of Emily Carr
(1979). Her 12-page introduction serves as a brief literary
autobiography. This fine essay reveals that Carr’s writing was
important to her throughout her life and not simply in her later years.
Carr had begun much of the work that comprises the Omnibus many years
before it was published in the 1930s and 1940s. In fact, Shadbolt notes,
“the creative flow alternated so readily between the two channels that
in reading her journals, as she discusses her work on any particular
day, one has to stop at times to determine whether she is talking about
her writing or her painting.”

Carr was ahead of her time on many issues. She remains both avant-garde
and a pioneer on environmental, Native, and women’s issues. Her
writing, which reflects the deep humanity as well as the eccentricities
of her vision, will continue to delight readers in this collection.