Growing Pains: The Autobiography of Emily Carr

W.J. Keith is a retired professor of English at the University of Toronto and author A Sense of Style: Studies in the Art of Fiction in English-Speaking Canada.

When Emily Carr suffered a heart attack in 1937 and could no longer make
strenuous painting trips into forest or wilderness, she turned to
writing—and achieved remarkable success from Klee Wyck (1941) onward.
In recent years, both her painting and her literary work have attracted
increased interest and attention, and her complete writings have
appeared in an admirable but heavy and unwieldy volume. Now her
publishers have wisely decided to reprint her volumes separately in a
uniform edition.

Both Growing Pains, her impressionistic autobiography, and The Heart of
a Peacock, a series of engaging narrative sketches, were published
posthumously. They reappear now with helpful introductions that should
have the effect of making her work accessible to yet another generation
of readers.

Carr was, of course, a feisty, unpredictable figure, and her writings
are invariably autobiographical. Her stories arise out of authentic
experience, and her ostensible memoirs often evolve, like good
anecdotes, into something that partakes of fiction. She was a woman of
extraordinary abilities and vitality, and her enthusiasms are
infectious. Life writing and a close-to-the-truth form of fiction blend
to produce an endearing world of heightened reality. There are too few
genuine “characters” in the Canadian creative arts, and Emily Carr
was undoubtedly one of them. Anyone who has not yet encountered these
seemingly effortless but exquisitely poised writings has a treat in
store.