Frederick Philip Grove (1879-1948) was named Felix Paul Berthold Friedrich Greve at his birth in Germany. While studying he published a poetry book, "Wanderunger." He worked as a translator, but he earned little and served a prison term. In 1909 he moved to Manitoba, changed his name, and became a teacher and writer. His published works include nine books of fiction, letters, sketches, and an autobiography. Borealis Press published his book of essays, "It Needs to be Said."

Over Prairie Trails is Fredrick Philip Grove's best-loved work. A series of autpbiographical nature sketches, this collections depicts a prairie landscape on the cusp of modernity and about to be forever transformed by new technologies. Grove's keen eye and imaginative musings create an important document in Canadian ecological history. Equally important in the process of Grove's self-creation, as he strives to make his narrator plausible despite his own assumed identity. Grove's description of his narrator's trials, triumphs, and failures as he navigates a difficult prairie landscape in summer and winter provides insight into social circumstances on the prairies in the 1920s. His narrator's devotion to wife and child, admirable yet problematic, animates the book's trajectory. Through bnoth detailed natural observations and outright flights of fancy, Over Prairie Trails captures one man's response to a landscape and social structure on the brink of tremendous change.

When Frederick Philip Grove´s novel Settlers of the Marsh was published in 1925, it produced controversy and scandal. Grove´s frank treatment of sexuality and his unflinching look at the rigours of settler life provide searing insights into the dynamics of an imagined settler community. The story of the Swedish immigrant Niels Lindstedt and the two very different women who vie for his affections not only enthralls readers with its violence and drama, but also illuminates contemporary social attitudes and mores. The novel, steeped in a European tradition and sensibility, moves beyond a prairie setting to address cosmopolitan aesthetic issues as well as regional ones. Niels´s attempts to come to terms with his new land and community, and the painful toll that these attempts take on him, open a window into settler immigrant experiences. More recently, readers have turned to the characterizations of Clara, the "gay widow," and Ellen, the hardworking, asexual farm woman, to understand the social and political forces at work on women´s lives. The discovery in the 1970s that Grove´s autobiography, the Governor General´s Award-winning In Search of Myself, was largely fictional and, more recently, the discovery that his early life included a secret marriage to an unconventional woman, led readers to reconsider Grove´s treatment of marriage in this novel. As this edition shows, readers continue to discover new and fascinating aspects of Settlers. This critical edition of Grove´s novel provides representative reviews from the time of its publication, a literary biography detailing the complicated life of its author, and a range of critical commentary from the following: Desmond Pacey, Laurie Ricou, Lorraine McMullen, Dick Harrison, Camille La Bossière, Robert Kroetsch, David Williams, Irene Gammel, Smaro Kamboureli, Klaus Martens, and Paul Morris. Also included are two essays written especially for this edition by Christian Riegel and Alison Calder. Alison Calder is an Associate Professor in the Department of English at the University of Manitoba, where she teaches Canadian literature and creative writing. She has published numerous articles on prairie literature and culture, and is the editor of Desire Never Leaves: The Poetry of Tim Lilburn and the co-editor of History, Literature, and the Writing of the Canadian Prairies. She is the 2004 winner of the Bronwen Wallace Memorial Prize for poetry, and her upcoming poetry book is Wolf Tree.