A new edition of Emily Carr’s final writings, This and That is a collection of autobiographical stories that gives fans of her work insight into the artist’s childhood, education, and development as a painter and writer.

Written in the last two years of Emily Carr’s life, the stories collected in This and That (which Carr wrote under the working title “Hundreds and Thousands”) were buried in the BC Archives for decades after their author’s death, not published in book form until 2007. This revised edition includes five more stories and an updated introduction, and is illustrated with some of Carr’s own artwork.

Centred on the Carr home on Government Street, the collection includes vivid snapshots of family life, told from the frustrating but often comical position of being the youngest of four strong-minded daughters. We meet beloved family pets, a plant-loving father with a fearsome temper, a hated aunt, siblings, neighbours, shopkeepers, and local personalities.

In these pages Carr traces her beginnings as a writer, her time at art school in San Francisco, visits to places like Nootka and Skidegate, and the early reaction to the change in both her painting style and subject matter these trips brought about.

Carr’s stories conjure the world of folk tales with a generous dash of Nancy Mitford. Taken together these anecdotes comprise a slant-wise autobiography of an artist ahead of her time in Victoria at the turn of the twentieth century.

Beloved Canadian artist and writer Emily Carr (December 13, 1871—March 2, 1945) was born in Victoria, British Columbia. She studied art in the U.S., England and France until 1911, when she moved back to British Columbia. Carr was most heavily influenced by the landscapes and First Nations cultures of British Columbia and Alaska. In the 1920s she came into contact with members of the Group of Seven and was later invited to submit her works for inclusion in a Group of Seven exhibition. They named her The Mother of Modern Arts about five years later.

Emily Carr's profile page

Ann-Lee Switzer is a historian, researcher, and writer with an interest in the Japanese Canadian experience as well as the work of Emily Carr. She is the editor of This and That: The Lost Stories of Emily Carr, which she discovered in the BC Archives. She is co-author, with her husband, Gordon, of Gateway to Promise: Canada’s First Japanese Community, which won second prize in the BC Historical Federation’s historical writing awards in 2013. Over the years she has written for magazines and newspapers. She and her husband live in Victoria, BC.

Ann-Lee Switzer's profile page

“The book is a delight. Carr comes to us full of personality and good cheer, setting down in the most direct way moments and memories which had stayed with her all her life. ” —Victoria Times Colonist