| The Yellow Briar: A Story of the Irish on the Canadian Countryside Contributor(s): Slater, Patrick (Author), Gnarowski, Michael (Introduction by) |
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ISBN: 1550028480 ISBN-13: 9781550028485 Publisher: Dundurn Press OUR PRICE: $17.09 Product Type: Paperback - Other Formats Published: July 2009 |
| Additional Information |
| BISAC Categories: - Fiction | Classics |
| Dewey: 813.5 |
| Series: Voyageur Classics |
| Physical Information: 0.6" H x 5.5" W x 8.4" (0.57 lbs) 192 pages |
| Themes: - Cultural Region - Canadian |
| Descriptions, Reviews, Etc. |
| Publisher Description: Folktale, memoir, fiction, literary hoax, The Yellow Briar is all of these. Ostensibly the charming remembrance of an Irish orphan who escapes the Great Famine of 1840s Ireland and comes to the New World to seek a fresh start on the streets of Toronto and in the pioneer hinterland of Canada West (Ontario), the book was actually a fictional humbug perpetrated by John Mitchell, a Toronto lawyer, who first published the tale in 1933. Patrick Slater, the protagonist of the memoir, is said to have died in 1924 but not before setting his saga down on paper. And what an account it is! The Globe and Mail felt that the book gives a picture of Ontario to be found in no other work of fiction we know and has won for itself a permanent place in Canadian literature. If nothing else, Slater/Mitchell captures perfectly the lilt of the Irish and the wry wisdom of an old soul to paint an affecting portrait of trials and tribulations in a long-ago time. |
Contributor Bio(s): Gnarowski, Michael: - Michael Gnarowski has written for Encyclopedia Americana, The Canadian Encyclopedia, The McGraw-Hill Encyclopedia of World Biography, and the Oxford Companion to Twentieth-Century Poetry. Gnarowski is professor emeritus at Carleton University in Ottawa.Slater, Patrick: - Patrick Slater was the pseudonym of John Mitchell (1880-1951), a Toronto lawyer. |