Of this novel of Canadian business life and village and city social conditions in the early twentieth century, the author explains that his object is 'to enlighten the public concerning life behind the wicket and thus pave the way for the legitimate organization of bankclerks into a fraternal association, for their financial and social (including moral) betterment.'

This light romance portrays in considerable detail the social life of Ottawa in the post-Confederation years. The gossip of the capital and the prevailing social customs strengthen the story of Honor Edgeworth's courtship. It is a novel of manners with a happy ending.

In August of 1913, a young University of New Brunswick graduate set out for Germany to study music at the renowned Royal Leipzig Conservatory. Helen VanWart was a vivacious, optimistic girl, eager to experience all that Europe had to offer. Her weekly letters home to her family paint a portrait of Europe's last months of peace, a time that, for Helen, passed all too quickly in classes, lessons, and practice, practice, practice, interspersed with many concerts, operas, and trips to such places as Dresden, Switzerland, and Rome. Despite her daily hours of practice - often five or six - she kept up an active social life, and her letters bring to life her fellow-students and boarders in her Pension, and perhaps most significantly, "Mr. Lochhead," a Canadian chemistry student about whom she is unaccustomedly reticent The future Mrs. Lochhead, indeed, was so immersed in her music and her friends that politics rarely impinged upon her letters. As with so many others in Europe and the British Empire, the outbreak of war appears to have taken her utterly by surprise. Helen's letters are living social history, a vibrant testament of a time now hard to imagine, the last year of "Edwardian" innocence, and a portrait of a world that, both musically and socially, had nothing backward-looking about it. The future lay ahead and it was going to be golden.

Looking Into Trees is the latest collection from the pen of eminent Canadian poet Douglas Lochhead. Drawing its inspiration from time spent looking "into trees, between trees, around trees," behind the poet's house, the collection evokes the wonderful mystery of trees and the way they confront the contemplative viewer. For Lochhead, the ever-changing landscape of trees, their shadows and lights, reflects life itself, the great changes and the small details. Lochhead presents looking into and between trees as a continuing surprise; every hour, every second is different, as light changes and wind moves, leading to reflection on the moods, events, and phases of human life. Lochhead's human world is intimately interwoven with its landscape. The work is illustrated with details from paintings by Kenneth Lochhead, the poet's brother and one of the Regina Five group of abstract painters who were so significant to the development of Canada's fine arts tradition.

Love on the Marsh, a long poem in 100 stanzas, is described by Lochhead as an extension of High Marsh Road and brother and sister to it. The diary-like entries, a form to which Lochhead has frequently returned over the years, can also be compared to his work in The Panic Field. By turns earthy and etherial, a pilgrimage through a landscape of grass and sky and tumultuous emotions, Love on the Marsh revisits the High Marsh Road with a new eye and finds in it the self-examining, self-discovering heart. Douglas Lochhead, a Fellow of the Royal Society of Canada and a life-member of the League of Canadian Poets, was born in Guelph, Ontario in 1922, and served as an infantry and artillery officer in the Canadian Army during World War II.

Dealing in part with the people involved in the Red River Rebellion of 1869-70, the novel is based on Begg's own experiences in the Red River Settlement and describes the realities of pioneer life. 'Dot It Down' was the nickname of Charles Mair, poet and member of the Canada First Movement.

A Canadian love story about Robbie Smith, a 19-year-old mail carrier travelling the old gravel roadway (now Highway 124) between Cromaboo (Erin) and Gibbeline (Guelph). One day on his travels he sees Miss Mary Paxton, an unwed lady, 14 years his senior. He falls in love with her. And so begins our tale.

Robert Barr has been almost completely overlooked by critics and anthologists of Canadian literature, in part because, although he was educated in Canada, he spent most of his life in the United States and England. However, since most of his serious novels are either set in Canada or have some Canadian connection, Barr deserves attention. The Measure of the Rule, originally published in 1907, is the nearest he came to writing an autobiographical novel. It concerns the Toronto Normal School and the experiences there in the 1870s of a young man who undoubtedly is Barr himself. In this novel, Barr is exorcising unhappy memories and is ironic, even bitter, about the school's quality of education, the rigid discipline observed by its staff and their indifference to their students, and the sexual segregation practiced. A number of men under whom Barr actually studied are vividly caricatured. As a realistic study of Ontario's only central teacher-training institution in the late nineteenth century, The Measure of the Rule will appeal both to those interested in Canadian fiction of that period and to those more concerned with the evolution of the system of education established by Egerton Ryerson. Also included with this reprint of the novel is an essay originally published in 1899 and entitled 'Literature in Canada.' In this essay, Barr elaborated upon his opinions of the school system and its quality of education.

Aside from Sam Slick, the book which gained Haliburton the greatest notoriety was The Letter Bag of The Great Western; or, Life in a Steamer, published in 1840. Much of this book was composed for the diversion of the other passengers on Haliburton's steamship voyage from Bristol to New York in 1839. The book's ostensible function was the advertisement of the advantages of travel by steamship, but few, after reading the passengers' accounts of their voyage, would, if they took them seriously, ever venture off shore. The book's principal sources of amusement - infirmities of the human body (seasickness), the peculiarities of spelling and grammar that arise from faulty or defective education, the cultural mores of other races and lower classes, and the outrageous punning.

The Season-Ticket, published in 1860, is made up of a series of articles previously contributed during 1859 and 1860 to the Dublin University Magazine. Its quality of interest lies in its major purpose: the programme of a thorough going British imperialist who advocates "a three-fold policy for developing intercommunication between the motherland and the colonies." In this work, Haliburton proposed that Great Britain subsidize transatlantic steamers between its ports and the colonies, complete the Intercolonial Railway and continue it to Lake Superior, and provide a "safe, easy, and expeditious route to Fraser's River on the Pacific." Haliburton further argues for the substitution of a permanent colonial council of appointees from the colonies in place of the Colonial Office, and he raises the possibility of colonial representation in the British parliament.

The Advocate, an historical melodramatic romance in prose, which makes use of English and French antagonisms in Lower Canada.

A five-act tragedy in blank verse. The play is founded upon the old problem of an unnatural and ill-omened union between youth and age.

Charles Heavysege's chief and best-known work, the long-verse drama and tragedy Saul, was published in Montreal in 1857. Coventry Patmore, reviewing Saul in the North British Review, ranked it as the greatest English poem published outside Great Britain. Hawthorne, Emerson, and Longfellow were all enthusiastic in their praise, and the play went into three editions. Saul is a drama of 135 scenes containing the remarkable character of the fallen angel Malzah, who has been compared by critics to Shakespeare's Caliban. Itis a powerful presentation of the tormented soul caught in a world of order and universal degree. Its main interest is to be found in the psychological frankness - Saul's recognition of his demon resonates with the deeper implication of the recognition of the doeppelganger - and in passages of sinewy verse written with a directness that anticipates E.J. Pratt.

A book of pioneer life in Upper Canada, arranged in the form of a story. The author spent five-sevenths of his life among the pioneer settlers of Western Canada. The incidents in the story are taken from the active life of the pioneers of Western Ontario, among whom the author grew up. A keen observer, the reverend author has been able to produce a faithful record of the hardships, trials and successes of the hardy pioneers of the Niagara district, and all that magnificent country lying between the Niagara River and Lake Huron and Georgia Bay. It is needless to say, therefore, that the book possesses much historic value as a picture of Canadian life in the early days of this western peninsula. The book is one which will be read with deep interest by those of the old pioneers who remain, and ought to become one of the household treasures of the descendants of those pioneers for many generations.

Originally published in 1887, this historical romance novel, set in York, is a romance of the early days of Upper Canada.

"High Marsh Road," a finalist for the 1980 Governor General's Award and a beautiful example of bookmaking, is now back in print. "High Marsh Road" is a signficant step in the century-long artistic tradition of the Tantramar region, begun by Charles G.D. Roberts and continued by Alex Colville, John Thompson, and Lochhead himself.

The book consists of 122 poems marking daily walks over the windblown marsh. Along with minute particulars of the marsh itself, its weather, and its birds and animals, "High Marsh Road" is an intimate account of a man's exploration of nature and the self.

"Homage to Henri Alline and Other Poems" marks a new stage in the long career of this renowned poet. The book consists of two long poems flanking a collection of related short poems. At once austere and rich, this book is a vintage offering from a poet at the height of his powers.