As one of the formative periods in Canadian history, the late nineteenth century witnessed the birth of a nation, a people, and a literature. In this study of Canada's first 'school' of poets, D.M.R. Bentley combines archival work, including extensive research in periodicals and newspapers, with close readings of the work of Charles G.D. Roberts, Archibald Lampman, Bliss Carman, William Wilfred Campbell, Duncan Campbell Scott, and Frederick George Scott. Bentley chronicles the formation, reception, national and international successes, and eventual disintegration (after the 1895 'War Among the Poets') of the Confederation Group, whose poetry forever changed the perception and direction of Canadian literature. With the aid of biographical, political, and sociological analyses, Bentley's literary history delineates the group's political, aesthetic, and thematic dispositions and characteristics, and contextualizes them not only within Canadian history and politics, but also within contemporary intellectual and literary currents, including Romantic nationalism, 'Canadianism', and poetic formalism. Bentley casts new light on the poets' commonalities - such as their debt to Young Ireland, their commitment to careful workmanship, and their participation in the American mind-cure movement - as well as on their most accomplished and anthologized poems from 1880 to 1897. In the process, he presents a compelling case for the literary and historical importance of these six men and their poems in light of Canada's cultural and political past, and defends their right to be known as Canada's first poetic fraternity at a time when Canada was striving to achieve literary and national distinction. The Confederation Group of Canadian Poets, 1880-1897 is an erudite and innovative work of literary history and critical interpretation that belongs on the bookshelf of every serious scholar of literary studies.

This is a representative collection of the writings of a neglected Canadian author, William Wilfred Campbell (1858-1918). Among the 112 poems in William Wilfred Campbell: Selected Poetry and Essays are the familiar “Indian Summer” and “How One Winter Came in the Lake Region,” along with many less well-known love poems, patriotic songs, and occasional poems. Some twenty manuscript pieces are published here for the first time. The notorious “Mermaid Inn” essay in which Campbell refers to the mythical nature of the cross is included, and so is the letter of self-justification that Campbell wrote—but never sent—to the editor of the Globe. Here, too, are speeches, essays published in The Week and the Ottawa Evening Journal, and significant sections from Campbells unfinished treatise on evolution, “The Tragedy of Man.” By the time Campbell died on New Year’s Day 1918, shifting values had begun to turn critical opinion against his work. Now William Wilfred Campbell: Selected Poetry and Essays will enable Canadians to appreciate Campbells art and to recognize his place in the development of Canadian thought.

Beyond the Hills of Dream is an artistic collection of Canadian poems by Wilfred Campbell, who was a Canadian poet influenced to a great extent by the Romantic movement. Hence, the work contains plenty of beautifully written poems about Nature, such as 'Morning' on the Shore,' 'In the Spring Fields,' 'An August Reverie,' 'Morning,' 'Glory of the Dying Day,' 'Dusk.' The collection also contains poems of Empire, such as 'Victoria,' 'O good gray Queen,' 'England,' 'Tis the name that the world repeats,' and 'The World-Mother', regarding Scotland, the poet's ancestral home. There are also some fantastic poems about biblical figures, Jacob and Lazarus. One verse that stands out is the powerful and lengthy poem called 'The Vengeance of Saki' concerning a woman wronged and replaced. This delightful collection of poetry contains an elevated style and diction and is full of themes of all sorts, making it one of the best sellers of its time.

In the twentieth century more people spoke English and more people wrote poetry than in the whole of previous history, and this Companion strives to make sense of this crowded poetical era. The original contributions by leading international scholars and practising poets were written as the contributors adjusted to the idea that the possibilities of twentieth-century poetry were exhausted and finite. However, the volume also looks forward to the poetry and readings that the new century will bring. The Companion embraces the extraordinary development of poetry over the century in twenty English-speaking countries; a century which began with a bipolar transatlantic connection in modernism and ended with the decentred heterogeneity of post-colonialism. Representation of the 'canonical' and the 'marginal' is therefore balanced, including the full integration of women poets and feminist approaches and the in-depth treatment of post-colonial poets from various national traditions. Discussion of context, intertextualities and formal approaches illustrates the increasing self-consciousness and self-reflexivity of the period, whilst a 'Readings' section offers new readings of key selected texts. The volume as a whole offers critical and contextual coverage of the full range of English-language poetry in the last century.