Phebe Florence Miller was a poet and postmistress who lived in Topsail, Newfoundland and Labrador from 1889–1979. Despite her success as a poetic voice in the 1920s and ’30s, Miller is an obscure figure for today’s readers. This book brings her life and her contributions to Newfoundland and Labrador culture back into focus through the lens of her most personal writing. Mistress of the Blue Castle: The Writing Life of Phebe Florence Miller is an evocative exploration of the ways that identity and place are created together through the diaries, journals, poems and letters that this mercurial artist left behind.

Vicki S. Hallett is Associate Professor in the Department of Gender Studies at Memorial University of Newfoundland and Labrador. Her work lives at the confluence of postcolonial, feminist, and life-writing studies and she is fascinated by the ways we create ourselves and our places in the world through stories. She is the author of Mistress of the Blue Castle: The Writing Life of Phebe Florence Miller (ISER Books, 2018), and has contributed to journals such as a/b:Auto/Biography Studies, The Journal of Autoethnography, Acadiensis, and TOPIA. She is a mother, and a settler Newfoundlander living in Ktaqmkuk (Newfoundland) and Nitassinan, Nunatsiavut, NunatuKavut (Labrador).

Vicki Hallett's profile page

• Short-listed, Newfoundland and Labrador Book Award for Non Fiction

"A landmark book, Mistress of the Blue Castle seeks to illuminate the life and writing of a hitherto little-studied poet. The work is a significant contribution to the study of Newfoundland culture."

Mary Dalton, author of Edge and Merrybegot

"Hallett sieves through all the balladry, salutations, even Miller’s headstone, to sculpt an image of Miller, contextualized by the exchanges with those around her, as well as the momentous events – women’s suffrage, two world wars, Confederation – occurring in her time."

Joan Sullivan, The Telegram