The Oxford Companion to Canadian Literature. 2nd ed.

Steve Pitt is a Toronto-based freelance writer and an award-winning journalist. He has written many young adult and children's books, including Day of the Flying Fox: The True Story of World War II Pilot Charley Fox.

The first edition of this work appeared in 1983. This second edition has
been expanded to more than 1100 entries, of which 342 are new. There are
profiles of major Canadian writers, poets, and literary scholars, as
well as entries on landmark works of Canadian literature, Awards,
Fantastic Literature, Crime Fiction, Gay Literature, Sportswriting, and
even Southern Ontario Gothic. To the traditional categories of English-
and French-Canadian literature have been added Caribbean-Canadian, South
Asian-Canadian, and Italian-Canadian categories. One wonders why
British-born authors like Michael Coren and Eric McCormack and
American-born writers like Ann Copeland and Carol Shields are considered
interchangeable with Canadian-born authors and not listed under the
separate categories of British- and American-Canadian.

The 325 contributors are drawn mainly from the academic ranks, with
some reinforcement from writers like Howard Engel and Douglas
Fetherling. Because this is essentially a guide to the best in Canadian
literature, there are few negative comments about any of the subjects.

As a reference work, the book sins mainly by omission. First of all,
the Companion is not comprehensive. Of course, even a tome just under
1200 pages long could never encompass every noteworthy Canadian
contribution to literature. Unfortunately, there are no stated criteria
for inclusion, which makes the book something of an insider’s club
where the rules are known only to the members.

A second annoyance is that some authors are included with entry titles
but no biographical data. The reader is directed to a general topic like
“Humour and Satire in English.” These entries are often several
pages in length and, because there is no specific page reference,
readers must pick through the fine print from beginning to end. All too
often, the reader then finds only the author’s name mentioned again
and nothing else.

Caveats aside, this book lives up to its billing as a true
companion—a work that informs and amuses, even as it occasionally
irritates.