The Book of Small is a collection of thirty-six short stories about a childhood in a town that still had vestiges of its pioneer past. Emily Carr tells stories about her family, neighbours, friends and strangers-who run the gamut from genteel people in high society to disreputable frequenters of saloons-as well as an array of beloved pets. All are observed through the sharp eyes and ears of a young and ever-curious girl. Carr's writing is a disarming combination of charm and devastating frankness.

The legendary Emily Carr was primarily a painter, but she first gained recognition as an author. She wrote seven popular, critically acclaimed books about her journeys to remote Native communities and about her life as an artist--as well as her life as a small child in Victoria at the turn of the last century.
The Book of Small is a collection of 36 short stories about a childhood in a town that still had vestiges of its pioneer past. With an uncanny skill at bringing people to life, Emily Carr tells stories about her family, neighbours, friends and strangers--who run the gamut from genteel people in high society to disreputable frequenters of saloons--as well as an array of beloved pets. All are observed through the sharp eyes and ears of a young, ever-curious and irrepressible girl, and Carr's writing is a disarming combination of charm and devastating frankness.
Carr's writing is vital and direct, aware and poignant, and as well regarded today as when she was first published to both critical and popular acclaim. The Book of Small has been in print ever since its publication in 1942, and, like Klee Wyck, has been read and loved by a couple of generations.

Poetry. Winner of the New Measure Poetry Prize. "If ostranenie-to make strange-is the mandate of contemporary poetry, Emily Carr has achieved this both brilliantly and beautifully. Kaleidoscopic in its glimmering slivers, the life she brings us is built of charged familiars slightly and completely changed: the sun turns on its stem; the stallion rolls in a pasture of blue ether. Although she references poetic antecedents from Wallace Stevens and William Carlos Williams to Joan Retallack and Mary Ruefle, it's not their voices, but their facility for invention, itself here reinvented, that keeps waking us up into a world sometimes alarming, often unsettling, and always careening until we, too, arrive 'delirious & shredded, sailing sideways through the greenly ravished vowels'"--Cole Swensen.

"Missus couldn't run the studio without me," says Billie the dog. This perpetual calendar is much more than 12 pictures with spaces for notes. Join Emily Carr's faithful companion, Studio Billie, on this light-hearted journey through a year in his life. It's 1909 and "the missus" runs a painting studio in Victoria, where she gives lessons to students and paints her own works. Studio Billie is with her always, except when "chained to a wretched kennel" when visiting relatives, or when having to spend time "down on cold rheumatic wind-swept lower decks, when they travel with their missuses holidaying." With "Studio Billie's Calendar," you can share a year with Emily Carr and her loyal dog. Use it year after year to record birthdays, anniversaries and other "splendacious" occasions.

Previously unpublished writings from Emily Carr's journals, notebooks and correspondence that provide fresh insights into the life and character of a Canadian legend. EMILY CARR (1871-1945) was an extraordinary writer and artist. Although primarily a painter, she first gained recognition as an author for her seven popular, critically acclaimed books about her journeys to Native communities and her stories about life as an artist, as a small child in Victoria at the turn of the last century and as a landlady. Susan Crean's introductions to the book and to each of the three sections provide an illuminating context, both historical and cultural, for this previously unpublished material and assess its contribution to the story of Emily Carr.