Chapter 3 - Emerging into Realism

Summary

In 1928 Raymond Knister (1899–1932), a poet and short-story writer from southwestern Ontario, published Canadian Short Stories, seventeen short stories by such authors as Morley Callaghan, Norman Duncan, and Stephen Leacock. In an appendix he lists other writers such as Sara Jeannette Duncan, Nellie McClung, Lucy Maud Montgomery, and Martha Ostenso. He had read almost everything written in the Canadian short-story form to prepare his encyclopedic introduction, “The Canadian Short Story,” the first public statement about the need for realism in Canadian fiction: “What is known as realism is only a means to an end, the end being a personal projection of the world. In passing beyond realism, even while they employ it, the significant writers of our time are achieving a portion of evolution. But most tale-spinners did not even achieve realism.”