Marian Engel was a writer's writer – an iconoclast, deeply admired and loved by a generation of Canadian authors and critics. Informal gatherings were often held at Engel's Toronto house, and it was there that Engel's many literary friendships were first nurtured, later to blossom through the exchange of numerous and extraordinary letters, which are variously funny, insightful, irreverent, and moving. Engel's lively epistolary practice offers a view of the literary landscape in Canada from 1965 to 1985 as seen through her correspondence with mentor Hugh MacLennan, and friends and colleagues Robertson Davies, Dennis Lee, Margaret Atwood, Timothy Findley, Alice Munro, Margaret Laurence, Matt Cohen, Robert Weaver, and Graeme Gibson, to name but a few.

In the spring of 2001, the Marian Engel Archive in Hamilton, Ontario received an exciting and unexpected new installment of Engel correspondence. Marian Engel: Life in Letters is born of that gift. In making their selection, Christl Verduyn and Kathleen Garay have chosen correspondence that specifically captures Engel's life as a writer, a narrative that spans her early youthful travels in Europe to her early death in 1985. In addition to the letters sent to her friends, this startling and important collection includes letters by Engel to critics, to editors, to granting officers, to publishers, and a brilliant letter to a chief librarian lambasting him for, among other pungent criticisms, the library's prejudice against 'Domesticity' amongst other categories. Thoughtfully presented and accompanied by insightful commentary, these letters are rich in their detail, filling in the fine points in the life of not only one Canadian writer, but of a nation of writers.

Marian Engel was a Canadian novelist. Engel's best-known novel is Bear, and her other novels include No Clouds of Glory, The Honeyman Festival, The Glassy Sea, and Lunatic Villas. She won the Governor General’s Literary Award for Fiction for Bear in 1976, and was made an Officer of the Order of Canada in 1982. Marian Engel died in Toronto in 1985.

Marian Engel's profile page

Kathleen Garay is an adjunct profesor in the Department of History at McMaster University.

Kathleen Garay's profile page

Christl Verduyn is the author, editor, or co-editor of over a dozen volumes in the areas of Canadian and Québécois literatures, women’s writing and criticism, “multicultural” and life writing, and Canadian Studies. Before joining the faculty at Mount Allison University, where she is now Professor Emerita of English and Canadian Studies, Dr. Verduyn taught at Wilfrid Laurier University, where she chaired the Canadian Studies Program, and at Trent University, where she was Chair of Women’s Studies (1987-90) and Chair of Canadian Studies (1993-99). A past editor of the Journal of Canadian Studies, recipient of the Governor General’s International Award for Canadian Studies and of the Order of Canada (CM), she is a Fellow of the Royal Society of Canada (FRSC) and a 3M National Teaching Fellow.

Christl Verduyn's profile page