The Concise Oxford Companion to Canadian Literature

Joseph Jones is a reference librarian in the Koerner Library at the
University of British Columbia.

This concise version is based on the second edition of The Oxford
Companion to Canadian Literature (1997). The introduction provides an
account of changes. Added are 61 new entries, with updating of
publication information in other entries. Removed are all except three
(substantially abridged) survey entries: Aboriginal Literature,
Exploration Literature, and Writing in New France. Deletions also
include francophone authors without a book in English translation, most
notices of editorship, some bibliographical citations, and some authors
of mainly historical interest.

Revision of entries may also involve loss of material. Two examples:
the entry for House of Anansi has been cut from 88 to 31 column lines,
and a vivid description of composition practice has been removed from
the entry for Keith Maillard. Careful researchers will want to compare
new and old entries.

Over four-fifths of the almost 900 entries are personal names. Most of
the remainder are titles, with some publishers and organizations, and a
few other entries like Four Horsemen, Joual, and Southern Ontario
Gothic. A classified and scannable list of headings other than personal
names (e.g., the 25 publishers) would be useful. Over half of the
five-dozen cross-references point to the three survey entries, with the
remainder a scattering of pseudonyms, initialisms, personal names, and
titles.

At more than eight pages, Governor General’s Literary Awards is by
far the longest entry. At the same time, a general entry for Awards has
been omitted. Authorship statements have been removed from the entries
themselves in favor of a general prefatory list of contributors. Space
has also been saved by extensive elimination of paragraphing.

New entries for persons include nine born in the 1960s, one born since
1970 (Evelyn Lau), and three deceased authors: Carole Corbeil, D.M.
Fraser, and Libby Scheier. Among the five new entries for titles, Colony
of Unrequited Dreams seems a particularly idiosyncratic choice.
Surprising deletions include Anvil Press and two early women writers,
Sophie Hensley and Agnes Machar. French titles have been relocated under
their English translations, with some (e.g., Pour la patrie)
inconsistency.

The authority conferred by the Oxford imprimatur is not lived up to.
Error takes a variety of forms. Alphabetization has Glass following
Glassco, Aquin following Arcadian, and Alan Sullivan following Rosemary
Sullivan. The entry for House of Anansi has two typos not found in the
second edition. The entry for William Gibson continues the error of
“Rel Toei” for “Rei Toei,” and that for Steven Heighton still
has The Ecstacy [sic] of Skeptics as a title. The entirely new
Encyclopedia of Literature in Canada, forthcoming in 2002 from
University of Toronto Press, promises strong competition for the Oxford
Companion.