Book contents
- Frontmatter
- Contents
- Introduction
- 1 The Gaelic Tradition up to 1750
- 2 Scottish Women Writers C.1560-C.1650
- 3 Old Singing Women and the Canons of Scottish Balladry and Song
- 4 Women and Song 1750-1850
- 5 Selves and Others: Non-fiction Writing in the Eighteenth and Early Nineteenth Centuries
- 6 Burns’s Sister
- 7 ‘Kept some steps behind him’: Women in Scotland 1780-1920
- 8 Some Early Travellers
- 9 From Here to Alterity: The Geography of Femininity in the Poetry of Joanna Baillie
- 10 Some Women of the Nineteenth-century Scottish Theatre: Joanna Baillie, Frances Wright and Helen MacGregor
- 11 The Other Great Unknowns: Women Fiction Writers of the Early Nineteenth Century
- 12 Rediscovering Scottish Women’s Fiction in the Nineteenth Century
- 13 Elizabeth Grant
- 14 Viragos of the Periodical Press: Constance Gordon'Cumming, Charlotte Dempster, Margaret Oliphant, Christian Isohel Johnstone
- 15 Jane Welsh Carlyle’s Private Writing Career
- 16 Beyond ‘The Empire of the Gentle Heart’: Scottish Women Poets of the Nineteenth Century
- 17 What a Voice! Women, Repertoire and Loss in the Singing Tradition
- 18 Margaret Oliphant
- 19 Caught Between Worlds: The Fiction of Jane and Mary Findlater
- 20 Scottish Women Writers Abroad: The Canadian Experience
- 21 Women and Nation
- 22 Annie S. Swan and O. Douglas: Legacies of the Kailyard
- 23 Tales of Her Own Countries: Violet Jacob
- 24 Fictions of Development 1920-1970
- 25 Marion Angus and the Boundaries of Self
- 26 Catherine Carswell: Qpen the Door!
- 27 Willa Muir: Crossing the Genres
- 28 ‘To know Being': Substance and Spirit in the Work of Nan Shepherd
- 29 Twentieth-century Poetry I: Rachel Annand Taylor to Veronica Forrest-Thomson
- 30 More Than Merely Ourselves: Naomi Mitchison
- 31 The Modem Historical Tradition
- 32 Jane Duncan: The Homecoming of Imagination
- 33 Jessie Kesson
- 34 Scottish Women Dramatists Since 1945
- 35 The Remarkable Fictions of Muriel Spark
- 36 Vision and Space in Elspeth Davie's Fiction
- 37 Designer Kailyard
- 38 Twentieth-century Poetry II: The Last Twenty-five Years
- 39 Contemporary Fiction I: Tradition and Continuity
- 40 Contemporary Fiction II: Seven Writers in Scotland
- 41 Contemporary Fiction III: The Anglo-Scots
- 42 The Mirror and the Vamp: Liz Lochhead
- 43 Women's Writing in Scottish Gaelic Since 1750
- Select Bibliographies of Scottish Women Writers
- Notes on Contributors
- Index
20 - Scottish Women Writers Abroad: The Canadian Experience
Published online by Cambridge University Press: 24 September 2020
- Frontmatter
- Contents
- Introduction
- 1 The Gaelic Tradition up to 1750
- 2 Scottish Women Writers C.1560-C.1650
- 3 Old Singing Women and the Canons of Scottish Balladry and Song
- 4 Women and Song 1750-1850
- 5 Selves and Others: Non-fiction Writing in the Eighteenth and Early Nineteenth Centuries
- 6 Burns’s Sister
- 7 ‘Kept some steps behind him’: Women in Scotland 1780-1920
- 8 Some Early Travellers
- 9 From Here to Alterity: The Geography of Femininity in the Poetry of Joanna Baillie
- 10 Some Women of the Nineteenth-century Scottish Theatre: Joanna Baillie, Frances Wright and Helen MacGregor
- 11 The Other Great Unknowns: Women Fiction Writers of the Early Nineteenth Century
- 12 Rediscovering Scottish Women’s Fiction in the Nineteenth Century
- 13 Elizabeth Grant
- 14 Viragos of the Periodical Press: Constance Gordon'Cumming, Charlotte Dempster, Margaret Oliphant, Christian Isohel Johnstone
- 15 Jane Welsh Carlyle’s Private Writing Career
- 16 Beyond ‘The Empire of the Gentle Heart’: Scottish Women Poets of the Nineteenth Century
- 17 What a Voice! Women, Repertoire and Loss in the Singing Tradition
- 18 Margaret Oliphant
- 19 Caught Between Worlds: The Fiction of Jane and Mary Findlater
- 20 Scottish Women Writers Abroad: The Canadian Experience
- 21 Women and Nation
- 22 Annie S. Swan and O. Douglas: Legacies of the Kailyard
- 23 Tales of Her Own Countries: Violet Jacob
- 24 Fictions of Development 1920-1970
- 25 Marion Angus and the Boundaries of Self
- 26 Catherine Carswell: Qpen the Door!
- 27 Willa Muir: Crossing the Genres
- 28 ‘To know Being': Substance and Spirit in the Work of Nan Shepherd
- 29 Twentieth-century Poetry I: Rachel Annand Taylor to Veronica Forrest-Thomson
- 30 More Than Merely Ourselves: Naomi Mitchison
- 31 The Modem Historical Tradition
- 32 Jane Duncan: The Homecoming of Imagination
- 33 Jessie Kesson
- 34 Scottish Women Dramatists Since 1945
- 35 The Remarkable Fictions of Muriel Spark
- 36 Vision and Space in Elspeth Davie's Fiction
- 37 Designer Kailyard
- 38 Twentieth-century Poetry II: The Last Twenty-five Years
- 39 Contemporary Fiction I: Tradition and Continuity
- 40 Contemporary Fiction II: Seven Writers in Scotland
- 41 Contemporary Fiction III: The Anglo-Scots
- 42 The Mirror and the Vamp: Liz Lochhead
- 43 Women's Writing in Scottish Gaelic Since 1750
- Select Bibliographies of Scottish Women Writers
- Notes on Contributors
- Index
Summary
In many countries, the work of women writers has been excluded from or only selectively admitted to the canon - those books included in school reading lists, analysed by students of literature at universities, and alluded to with respect by critics. In Canada, however, any history of the national literature would certainly include many women writers, from Susanna Moodie, Isabella Valancy Crawford and Sara Jeannette Duncan, to Margaret Laurence, Alice Munro and Margaret Atwood. Many of these ‘canonised’ women were of Scottish descent, and virtually all of them were very heavily influenced by Scottish writers from Scott to Spark. Perhaps the hint of heather had much to do with the relative ease with which these writers leapt over the prejudices of male teachers, editors, publishers and critics, since a colonial devotion to the old country persisted long after Scots no longer predominated in the demographic mix in Canada.
But in Canada, as elsewhere, there was an equally interesting group of women whose work has not survived as part of the canon, in spite of their enormous popularity and the respect they aroused in their own time. This group would include Margaret Murray Robertson, May Agnes Fleming, L. M. Montgomery, Marshall Saunders, Nellie McClung, Marian Keith and Grace Campbell - again mostly of Scottish descent and again heavily indebted to Scottish writers, though unfortunately for their ultimate reputation, they modelled their work on Scottish writers who have also slipped from prominence: Catherine Sinclair, Mrs Oliphant, and the Kailyard novelists, especially J. M. Barrie.
Both groups transplanted and naturalised Scottish themes, techniques and topics; then they hybridised the work of the Scots by adding a female twist to stories devised by men. In Tradition in Exile, John Matthews compared the process of new country growth from old country roots to the development of a banyan tree. In Canada, the new growth not only came up Canadian, it also came up feminine.
Let me illustrate this hybridising process first by looking at a woman who was not Scottish but who responded to Scottish literary material. Susanna Moodie emigrated from England in 1832.
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- A History of Scottish Women's Writing , pp. 309 - 315Publisher: Edinburgh University PressPrint publication year: 2020