Canadian Literature (journal) - Establishment and History of Canadian Literature

Establishment and History of Canadian Literature

Canadian Literature was established in the autumn of 1958 by Roy Daniells and George Woodcock at the University of British Columbia. The first issue of the journal appeared in summer 1959 to skeptical reception because of a general belief that Canada had no national literature; some critics predicted that the journal would run out of material after only a few issues. Initially, editor George Woodcock intended that Canadian Literature would be fully bilingual in French and English, but due to the lack of French submissions, after 10 years of publication French-language material never rose above 10% of an issue's content. At the time of its foundation, Canadian Literature was the first and only quarterly entirely devoted to the discussion and criticism of Canadian writing and literature. Although the position of editor eventually went to George Woodcock, the university's first choice would have been folk bibliographer and UBC's only specialist in Canadian literature, Reginald Watters, but instead offered the position to Woodcock after Watters decided to accept a fellowship in Australia. Under Woodcock's editorship, he strived to keep the journal from being purely academic, instead adopting a tone "serious but not academic, popular but not journalistic, contextual more than textual" (Fetherling). Woodcock later attributed Canadian Literature's success to having arrived "at the right moment in the development of a Canadian literary tradition, and created its own ground swell of critical activity."

Woodcock resigned from editorship in 1977, having edited 73 issues of the journal. He appointed his first choice, W. H. New, to succeed him. New had served as an assistant editor since 1965. New chose to give priority to First Nations, Asian Canadian, Caribbean Canadian and other minority literatures, which previously had been under-represented in Canadian literary criticism. New retired from the position of Editor in 1955, having edited 72 issues.

New was succeeded by Eva-Marie Kröller as editor. She raised the journal's reputation world wide by establishing an international editorial board and refining the peer-review process for article submissions, which had been started by New. The goal of formalizing the peer-review process was to allow the journal to keep appealing to both general and scholarly audiences. During Kröller's editorship, Canadian Literature fortified its commitment to Canadian francophone writers by appointing its first Associate Editor specifically for francophone writing, Michel Rocheleau. Under Associate Editor Réjean Beaudoin's guidance, Canadian Literature has published several special issues featuring a majority of French content, such as "Littérature Francophone hors-Québec / Francophone Writing Outside Quebec."

In 1995, the journal underwent major design changes: it moved from plain beige covers to coloured, changed to a narrower trim, and added more pages to each issue in order to accommodate an expanded focus on themes such as postcolonialism, poetics, cultural history, and multiculturalism. The journal also decided to keep publishing original poems by Canadian writers as a part of its tradition as "an in-between" literary periodical.