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Papers of The Bibliographical Society of Canada
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This is an Open Access Journal

Open Access journal
ISSN (Print) 0067-6896
Published by U of Toronto

[41 journals]

The Awkward Homecoming of Maria Monk
- Authors: Forrest Pass
  Abstract: Awful Disclosures of Maria Monk (1836) is perhaps Canada's most scandalous literary export. However, only a few editions of the scurrilous anti-Catholic fabrication have been published in its purported author's country of origin. A mysterious undated edition, “published for the trade” in Toronto, is probably the most widely circulated Canadian printing. Based on a close investigation of the Toronto edition's physical characteristics—the stereotype plates used to print it, the illustrations, and the mismatched printer's ornaments appearing on certain pages—as well as the ownership history of one copy and the context of the book's legal status in Canada, this article argues that the Toronto edition is evidence of an anonymous publisher's strategies to evade customs censorship. It suggests that these strategies influenced how Canadian readers might have engaged with Awful Disclosures, highlighting the tension between obscenity and anti-Catholicism that underlays the book’s reception among readers, printers, and censors.
  PubDate: 2024-04-03
  DOI: 10.33137/pbsc.v61i1.41138
  Issue No: Vol. 61 (2024)
“Notre voisine méconnue”
- Authors: Violette Drouin
  Abstract: Though Margaret Laurence’s Manawaka Cycle was met with success upon its publication in English, it is no obvious feat to translate such success across the borders of language, even within her own home country. This article attempts to chart the complex history of the translation of the Manawaka Cycle into French and its reception in Quebec. Drawing on reviews, advertisements, letters, and the books themselves, it establishes two periods of translation: the first in the 1970s and 1980s, the second in the early 2000s. It traces the challenges faced by publishers of these translations, and how they adapted to the changing literary and political climate of the second half of the twentieth century. It also touches on the complex relationship between French and French-Canadian publishers, as well as the reception of Laurence’s work in Quebec and translation spaces in the collective literary memory. Finally, it compares translations and retranslations of two of Laurence’s novels to garner insight into the differences between the two translation periods.
  PubDate: 2024-02-23
  DOI: 10.33137/pbsc.v61i1.41440
  Issue No: Vol. 61 (2024)
Participatory Readership
- Authors: Megan Butchart
  Abstract: Despite the emerging proliferation of periodical studies scholarship attentive to various facets of the publishing circuit, relatively little is known about the readers of historical periodicals. Who were they' How were they reading' Why were they reading' How did readers participate in the work of periodicals discursively and non-discursively' This article outlines the process of reconstructing, from archival subscription records, the historical subscribership of South Today, a “little” literary magazine and activist publication published in the American South in the 1930s and 1940s by editors Lillian Smith and Paula Snelling. Combining the findings of this data with reader testimony in the magazine and archive, I consider the difference between “imagined” and “real” readerships and investigate how Smith and Snelling’s curation of readerly community spaces—and the resultant reader participation both on and off the page—contributed to the magazine’s development and community-based political activism. Although South Today has fallen somewhat into obscurity, it had a relatively large circulation and long run for a little magazine, and it serves as an insightful publication in the history of the long civil rights movement. Furthermore, its community approach to publishing and openly anti-segregationist politics make it an interesting candidate for a study of readership, for as South Today was increasingly subjected to state surveillance, reading the magazine became more and more of a political act. This article contributes not only to studies of little magazines and their readerships generally, but also proposes that understanding South Today’s politics and historical significance necessitates a study of its approach to readership. Ultimately, this article offers evidence of South Today’s readers as active participants rather than passive consumers, and argues that these peripheries around print objects are important sites of community and activism that deserve greater attention.
  PubDate: 2024-02-21
  DOI: 10.33137/pbsc.v61i1.41451
  Issue No: Vol. 61 (2024)

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