Jay Macpherson - Life

Life

Jay Macpherson was born in London, England, in 1931. She was brought to Newfoundland in 1940 as a 'war guest'. She took high school at Bishop Spencer College, St. John's, and Glebe Collegiate, Ottawa.

In 1951 Macpherson received a BA from Carleton College (now Carleton University) in 1951, followed by a year at University College in London. She received a BLS from McGill University, and then completed her MA and Phd at Victoria College, University of Toronto, both supervised by professor and critic Northrop Frye.

Macpherson published poetry in Contemporary Verse in 1949. Her first book was published in 1952.

In 1954 Macpherson began her own small press, Emblem Books, which published her second volume, O Earth Return. Between 1954 and 1963, Emblem Books published eight chapbooks featuring the work of Canadian poets, including Dorothy Livesay, Alden Nowlan, and Al Purdy.

Macpherson's two earlier volumes were incorporated into The Boatman (1957), a book which "gained her a considerable reputation. Dedicated to Northrop Frye and his wife, the collection reflects Frye's emphasis on the mythic and archetypal properties of poetry." The Boatman won the Governor General's Award in 1958.

Macpherson taught English at Victoria College from 1957 until 1996. She became a Professor of English in 1974.

Macpherson was "deeply Christian, a Protestant humanist."

Her 1982 book The Spirit of Solitude is "a highly regarded study of the elegiac and pastoral traditions from the 17th century onward."

Jay Macpherson died on Mar 21, 2012.