William Wilfred Campbell: Selected Poetry and Essays

Anne Burke is the editor of the Prairie Journal Press and author of
Prairie Journal Prose.

William Wilfred Campbell was writing poetry at the age of 14. He self-published books during his lifetime and posthumous editors have not served him well. Much of his prodigious literary output remains unpublished or out of print.

Consequently this present edition may be welcomed by the reading public. Serious students still face a plethora of sources. Scholars will be obliged to consult the manuscripts at Queen’s University. The more’s the pity, because Laurel Boone, an accomplished scholar and able editor, had prepared “The Complete Poetry of William Wilfred Campbell” as a dissertation and is now engaged in research on a new biography.

Of particular interest is the fact that Boon revises the author’s birthdate and place of birth. She “adds” items to A Complete Bibliography of William Wilfred Campbell by Carl Klinck (although which these are, and whether they have been printed here, is not readily apparent), and she avows not having seen “some” items which Klinck lists.

This is a variorum edition, authoritative printed texts of 112 “representative” poems culled from 600 extant. Boone relies on The Collected Poems of Wilfred Campbell which George Wicken earlier noted was edited anonymously.

As to “The Mystery,” Boone differs from Klinck (who claimed the copy of Collected Poems held by William Lyon Mackenzie was corrected by Campbell’s hand). “The Night Watcher” was not published until W.J. Sykes included it in a “posthumous” section of The Poetical Works of Wilfred Campbell. Although internal evidence is cited this does not prove Sykes — who, Boone agrees, otherwise took “such liberties” — used a version revised by Campbell.

The publisher boasts of 20 manuscript pieces published “here for the first time.” Which these are is not mentioned but, on comparison, one recognizes the chapters excerpted from “The Tragedy of Man” treatise, as well as some public addresses drawn from Campbell’s journalism.

Boon offers an editorial retraction by the Globe for Campbell’s controversial ideas about religion, in addition to a manuscript draft which he never mailed and the shorter apology which did see print. There are some curious choices and omissions among the selection of prose which will not stand up well against editor Barry Davies’s At the Mermaid Inn, and the columns of the Ottawa Evening Journal which Boone says elsewhere she consulted in typescript. The spoof of Lampman / Millet poetry is happily included and it is good to have the introduction to Collected Poems which had been unceremoniously ripped out of my first-edition library copy.

There is little doubt Campbell merits closer study: as an ordained minister whose religious ideas rated censure, whose popularity as a poet caused debate by the Senate, and who, in his later years, fostered an ideal of imperialism and theorized about human origins.

There is some industry yet to come in the Campbell canon, of which this is simply a sampler.