Keepers of the Code explores the complex network of associations and negotiations that influenced the development of literary anthologies in English Canada from 1837 to the present. Lecker shows that these anthologies are deeply conflicted narratives that embody the tensions and anxieties felt by their editors when faced with the challenge of constructing or rejecting national ideals. He argues that these are intensely self-conscious works with their own literary mechanisms and architecture. In reading the history of these anthologies, he witnesses a complex narrative of nation, a compelling story about the values and interests informing English-Canadian literary history.

Robert Lecker is Greenshields Professor of English at McGill University. He is the editor of several anthologies, most recently Open Country: Canadian Literature in English, and the author of numerous books and articles, including On the Line, Robert Kroetsch, Another I, Making It Real, Dr. Delicious, The Cadence of Civil Elegies, and Keepers of the Code.

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‘This lively study illuminates the history and constitution of Canadian literature.… A reward of reading Lecker is the salutary realization that Canadian writing is vaster and stranger than is often acknowledged.

The Bull Calf: Reviews in Fiction, Poetry, and Literary Criticism December 2015

‘Lecker shows admirable objectivity as he guides the reader through the history of the Can Lit anthology… The result is a perfect combination of cannon-questioning and imagining Canada through literature… Fascinating study… Lecker’s book is admirable in all regards.’

Southern Journal of Canadian Studies, vol 6:01:2015

‘Keepers of the Code shines as a work of critically informed literary history, deftly historicizing a surprisingly broad tradition of anthologies, mapping their shifting priorities, and demystifying the forces behind their compilation…It will rightly become a key study for discussion of literary anthologies in Canada.’

Canadian Literature Spring 2014

‘Keepers of the Code is admirable in its ability to place work in a material context… Particularly impressive are Lecker’s personal interventions in the narrative… Lecker also excels at recognizing continuities.’

University of Toronto Quarterly vol 84:03:2015