The Book of Small

Allison Sivak is a librarian in the Science and Technology Library at
the University of Alberta.

These new editions of two of Emily Carr’s books are prefaced by
introductions from contemporary writers: that for The Book of Small by
Sarah Ellis, and that for The House of All Sorts by Susan Musgrave. Carr
was a true synesthetist who often interchanged one sense for another,
making for a lively and unusual style. While Carr sometimes ventured
into a purple prose, it is the strength of her emotion and the frankness
of her expression that allow for easy connection between reader and
writer. She made no attempt to hide either her pure joy or her despair.

While The Book of Small captures the immediacy of childhood’s extreme
fluctuations in emotion, The House of All Sorts presents the struggles
of a female artist in the early 20th century who must choose between her
intense desire to paint and making a (poor) living working as a
landlady. That Carr for so long had to use her studio as an additional
rental space, leaving herself with little room or time to make art, is a
painful thread running beneath the surface of her anecdotes.

Of as much interest is Carr’s portrait of the growing city of
Victoria: its physical growth, cultural development, and racial and
national politics. Sharp divides between the English and the Canadian,
the Chinese immigrants, and the First Nations emerge. As well, Carr’s
own well-off childhood contrasts with her adult life as a poor and
struggling artist; while her father protested the building of a saloon
near the family’s home, Carr, who often had alcoholic tenants, came
into direct contact with people from a much greater range of economic
and class backgrounds.

The prefaces to both books contextualize what these works might say
about Emily Carr as an experimental artist and as a woman. While Carr
herself does not attempt to mythologize her struggles and her artistic
career, the prefaces to some extent do. It would have been interesting
to see some allusion to recent criticism around Carr’s work,
particularly challenges to her use of First Nations imagery as her own.
The books remain, however, important works of West Coast Canadian
literature, and their reprinting will help introduce new generations of
readers to them.