Half-Mohawk, half-English author Pauline Johnson astounded Canada with her unique poetry, prose, and presentations.

Pauline Johnson was an unusual and unique presence on the literary scene during the late 19th and early 20th centuries. Part Mohawk and part European, she was a compelling female voice in the midst of an almost entirely male writing community. Having discovered her talent for public recitation of poetry, Johnson relied on her ancestry and gender to establish an international reputation for her stage performances, during which she appeared in European and native costume. These poems were later collected under the title of Flint and Feather (1912) and form the source of the selections appearing in this volume.

Later, suffering from ill health, Pauline Johnson retired from the stage and devoted herself to the writing of prose, collected in Legends of Vancouver, The Moccasin Maker (1913), and The Shagganappi (1913), gleanings from which form part of this collection.

E. Pauline Johnson (1861–1913) was born on the Six Nations Reserve near Brandford, Ontario, the daughter of George Johnson, a Mohawk chief, and Emily Howells, an Englishwoman. Often billed as "the Mohawk Princess," she spent a number of years touring Canada, the United States and England, giving dramatic readings of her work. She retired to live in Vancouver in 1909 and published Legends of Vancouver a couple of years before her untimely death in 1913. Her ashes are buried in her beloved Stanley Park.

Pauline Johnson published numerous storeis and poems, as well as six books, two of them posthumously: The White Wampum (1895), Canadian Born (1903), Legends of Vancouver (1911). Flint and Feather (1912), The Moccasin Maker (1913) and The Shagganappi (1913).

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Michael Gnarowski co-edited The Making of Modern Poetry in Canada, compiled The Concise Bibliography of E nglish Canadian Literature, and edited the Critical Views on Canadian Writers Series for McGraw-Hill Ryerson. He 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.

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