The Constance Heresford-Howe Papers

R.G. Moyles is a professor of English at the University of Alberta, and
the co-author of Imperial Dreams and Colonial Realities: British Views
of Canada, 1880–1914.

As records of archival holdings, these compilations are—as all
previous inventories in this series have been—exemplary in the clarity
of their arrangement, in the meticulous attention to detail of each
entry, in the eye-pleasing and instantly accessible format, and in the
thoroughness of explanatory introductions. In addition to standard
archival introductions establishing the nature and scope of the
material, each volume contains an excellent biocritical essay by an
authority in Canadian literature—Louis MacKendrick on John Metcalf,
and Lorraine McMullen on Beresford-Howe. MacKendrick, the more incisive
of the two (and maybe necessarily so), deftly deals with a controversial
writer and polemicist in a manner that, though not likely to convince
Metcalf’s critics that he possesses extraordinary literary talent,
nevertheless honestly accords him respect as a foremost “literary
commentator, editor and anthologizer” of our time. McMullen, seemingly
less certain of her subject, leaves us with a rather vague (though
familiarly modern) assessment to the effect that the key to
Beresford-Howe’s varied textual strategies “is her rejection of
essentialism and her resolve to interrogate both tradition and
contemporary assumptions.” What both essays seem to point to, though
no explicit value judgments are made, is that these are the literary
archives of two “peripheral” writers on the Canadian scene. This
raises an interesting question. Some Canadian scholars would undoubtedly
ask just what value judgments are being made (in secret conclave) by
university authorities in their choice of purchases: what stature, how
long dead, how Canadian, etc., should the authors be. And there may come
a time when the question needs to be answered. For the moment, however,
it is enough that the archives are being purchased, protected, and
catalogued; the future may prove that the purchasers are wiser than any
of us could have foreseen.