About the Book This collection of short stories written in Canada before the end of WWI navigates between the extremes of commercial fiction and "serious literature," and between the canonically sanctioned and the marginalized, in order to be at once historically representative, inclusive, and open to a variety of critical approaches. It includes works by well-known authors such as Thomas Chandler Haliburton, Charles G. D. Roberts, and Stephen Leacock, as well as lesser-known writers (such as the Chinese-Canadian Edith Eaton) and many such as Gilbert Parker and E. W. Thomson who have become less popular in the last thirty years. It places a variety of popular forms, including the detective story and the wilderness adventure, alongside serious stories of psychological realism, spiritual renewal, and political advocacy. These stories are just plain great reading, especially for those interested in Canada and our history as Canadians. They offer a chance to laugh with Pauline Johnson at the stereotype of the "Indian Princess," to experience "camping out" in Muskoka in 1886, and to lament, with J. MacDonald Oxley, the US domination of the Canadian literary market. They also offer students the opportunity to discuss some of the most interesting issues in current literary studies: the ways that genre encodes cultural assumptions; the construction of gender in early Canada; the ways that Canadians have understood themselves as members of a national community, and the ways this community has constructed its racialized "other." They invite readers to rethink what Canada is, and imagine what it might be in the future. This critical edition includes contributions from these Canadian writers: Frank Davey, W. H. New, James Doyle, Mary Louise Pratt, Stephen Scobie, and Daniel Francis.

About the Author Misao Dean
Misao Dean, who teaches Canadian literature at the University of Victoria, was educated at Ottawa's Carleton University and Queen's University at Kingston, where she received a Ph.D. in 1986. She has published critiques on authors such as Susanna Moodie and Emily Carr, and authored several books. She also edited "Early Canadian Short Stories: Short Stories in English before World War I" (2000, Tecumseh).