Canadian Journal of Irish StudiesCanadian Association of Irish Studies

Isabella Valancy CrawfordAuthor(s): Kevin JamesSource: The Canadian Journal of Irish Studies, Vol. 26/27, Vol. 26, no. 2 - Vol. 27, no. 1 (Fall,2000 - Spring, 2001), pp. 120-125Published by: Canadian Journal of Irish StudiesStable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/25515354 .

Accessed: 18/06/2014 17:14

Your use of the JSTOR archive indicates your acceptance of the Terms & Conditions of Use, available at .http://www.jstor.org/page/info/about/policies/terms.jsp

.JSTOR is a not-for-profit service that helps scholars, researchers, and students discover, use, and build upon a wide range ofcontent in a trusted digital archive. We use information technology and tools to increase productivity and facilitate new formsof scholarship. For more information about JSTOR, please contact support@jstor.org.

.

Canadian Journal of Irish Studies and Canadian Association of Irish Studies are collaborating with JSTOR todigitize, preserve and extend access to The Canadian Journal of Irish Studies.

http://www.jstor.org

This content downloaded from 185.2.32.49 on Wed, 18 Jun 2014 17:14:09 PMAll use subject to JSTOR Terms and Conditions

ICgflN JAMES 11 111 mg

| iillli jMMl%yMtanfl| Cffinvf^pta III iiilii iiillliii i

During the last twenty-five years, academic interest has increased in the life of the prolific nineteenth-century Canadian writer, Isabella Valancy Crawford

? marking a renaissance of

interest in the Irish-born Crawford, whose short life was marked by itiner

ancy and by increasing impoverishment as an affluent Dubliner adapted to

life in rural British North America. Isabella Valancy Crawford was born in the

Irish capital to an Irish London-trained doctor, the Protestant Stephen Dennis Crawford, and his wife Sydney Scott; solidly middle-class, the

Crawford family's early years in Ireland are shrouded in some mystery ?

the date of Isabella's birth is itself unconfirmed, but is believed to be 1850. What details of the family's early life are known attest both to the precari ousness of health visited even upon prosperous sections of Ireland's post

Famine population, and to the peripatetic lifestyle the Crawfords shared

with many of their compatriots, Protestant and Catholic, prosperous and

destitute. Isabella would later describe herself as the sixth child in the fam

ily: little is known of her five younger siblings, who presumably died before

the family moved to Wisconsin, where another daughter was born in 1854. The birth of a son, Stephen, in Ireland two years later, testified to the fami

ly's decision to join the ranks of Ireland's emigrants, as does evidence of a

brief sojourn by Dr. Crawford in Australia before he and his family set off for

Canada around 1858.

120 CJIS VOLUME 26 NUMBER 2, VOLUME 27 NUMBER 1

This content downloaded from 185.2.32.49 on Wed, 18 Jun 2014 17:14:09 PMAll use subject to JSTOR Terms and Conditions

The first Canadian residence for the Crawford family was in the vil

lage of Paisley, in Bruce County in Canada West, where Isabella's father

took up the practice of medicine. Paisley was a small community of some

f 150 pN&iple at the jju^ionof thf Weedarid Saugeen Overs. Ttier?tIsabella

! begaficomposTftg^ poem draW

ing on the \ewm0&tid imagery ofthfc First Nations ? that would elevate

her posthumously to the level of the great colonial Victorian writers. But in

Paisley, as in Dublin, Isabella Crawford lost more of her siblings. From there,

in 1864, they moved to the village of Lakefield, of similar size to Paisley, but

in the Township of Duoro in the Kawartha Lakes district ? made famous as

the residence of two of Canada's other leading authors ?

the sisters

Susanna Moodie and Catharine Parr Trail, whose work, like that of Isabella

Valancy Crawford, was richly informed by imagery of the vast, at times

unwelcoming, colonial terrain. A third move followed ? this time to a home

facing the market square in the district's urban centre of Peterborough, the

capital of the County of Peterborough, and a town which owed its prosper

ity to the lumber trade but also served as the site of many factories and

stores, churches of six denominations and several banking branches. In

Peterborough, Crawford's poetry ?

published occasionally in the provin

cial press ?

began to earn attention. Publication in newspapers offered

opportunities for poets and writers to gain local ? and sometimes

wider ? attention, and in the nineteenth century provided them with a

source of modest income. Poetry and serialised novels in particular were

popular among newspaper readers, and local literary figures such as

Crawford developed profiles through the medium of the provincial press. When her father died in 1875, leaving a widow, a delicate daughter, Naomi,

and a son, Stephen, who subsequently migrated to Algoma, Ontario, it fell

to Isabella to support the family: this task appeared to be facilitated by a

hundred-dollar cheque received as prize money for a short-story competi

tion, but the financial failure of the donor compounded the family's woes,

which were increased with the death of Naomi in 1876. From there, the peri

patetic Crawford migrated to the city of Toronto with her mother, moving from house to house in the provincial capital and eking out a modest living

with verse, short stories and novelettes published in the local newspapers,

the Globe and Telegram. It was at this stage in her life and career that

Isabella Crawford published her first and only book of poetry, Old

Spookses' Pass, Malcolm's Katie, and Other Poems, in 1884; although the

print-run was 1,000, only fifty copies were sold. Nonetheless, the work was

trumpeted in the local literary journal The Week, and positive reviews bol

stered the reputation of a writer who was also gaining stature in interna

tional circles, winning notice in the British press, but failing to make a lucra

tive?or even stable ?living for herself and her mother. Although she

secured regular publications in the provincial press, Crawford remarked bit

terly that her work had been largely neglected by leading Canadian literary

periodicals.

JAMES ISABELLA VALANCY CRAWFORD 121

This content downloaded from 185.2.32.49 on Wed, 18 Jun 2014 17:14:09 PMAll use subject to JSTOR Terms and Conditions

Isabella Valancy Crawford's life, and her promising career as a writer, were short. On 12 February 1887, one of the young country's most talented

young poets and writers died, aged 36, and was buried in Peterborough, the

last but one of the Crawford children to die. Isabella Valancy Crawford never

married. Her works were later resurrected through the efforts of John William

Garvin (appointed literary executor of Crawford's estate by her brother

Stephen in 1902) and of Garvin's wife, Catherine Hale. Finally winning posthu mous notice in leading literary journals, the quality of Crawford's work led her

to gain posthumous notice and a place among the most notable writers of the

new Dominion. While Crawford's short life was marked by impoverishment, local and even international praise did not elude her during her own lifetime.

This attention was later promoted by Garvin and Hale, and recently through the research and writings of the celebrated Canadian poet Dorothy Livesay,

who has taken a keen interest in Crawford's writing: indeed, she purports to

have found documentation tracing the Crawford family's lineage to seven

teenth-century Scottish settlers in Ireland. Crawford's poetry is seldom explic

itly autobiographical, but it is profoundly shaped by her experience negotiat

ing and understanding the colonial culture and landscape. Struggles with

bereavement and perpetual migration characterised her short life. Born into

the relative comfort of professional society in Dublin, Isabella Valancy Crawford's promise as a writer may have been only partially fulfilled, owing to

her premature death, but she is now acknowledged as an influential figure

during formative years in English-Canadian writing.

Bibliography of Sources

Burns, Robert Alan. "The Poet in Her Time: Isabella Valancy Crawford's Social, Economic, and Political Views." Studies in Canadian Literature 14 (1989): 1: 30-53.

The Canada Directory for 1857-58, Containing Names of Professional and Business Men and of the Principal Inhabitants, in the Cities, Towns and Villages Throughout the Province, vol. I, A-Riche. Montreal: John Lovell, 1857.

Farmiloe, Dorothy. Isabella Valancy Crawford: The Life and Legends. Ottawa: Tecumseh Press, 1983.

Galvin, Elizabeth McNeill. Isabella Valancy Crawford: We Scarcely Knew Her. Toronto: Natural Heritage/Natural History, Inc., 1994.

Hale, Katherine. Isabella Valancy Crawford. Toronto: Ryerson Press, n.d.

Ross, Catherine "Isabella Valancy Crawford, "

in Oxford Companion to Canadian

Literature, 2nd ed. Toronto: University of Oxford Press, 1997, 238-9.

"I. V. Crawford: The Growing Legend." Canadian Literature (Summer 1979): 81:143-7.

Livesay, Dorothy. "Crawford, Isabella Valancy", Dictionary of Canadian Biography, vol.11,1880-1900. Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 1982, 212-14.

"The Life of Isabella Valancy Crawford", in The Crawford Symposium, edited by Frank M. Tiemey. Ottawa: University of Ottawa Press, 1979, 5-10.

Lovell's Gazetteer of British North America (Montreal: John Lovell, 1873).

Petrone, Penny. "In Search of Isabella Valancy Crawford", in The Crawford Symposium edited by Frank M. Tierney. Ottawa: University of Ottawa Press, 1979, 11-18.

"The Imaginative Achievement of Isabella Valancy Crawford". Ph.D. Dissertation, University of Alberta, 1977.

122 CJIS VOLUME 26 NUMBER 2. VOLUME 27 NUMBER 1

This content downloaded from 185.2.32.49 on Wed, 18 Jun 2014 17:14:09 PMAll use subject to JSTOR Terms and Conditions

< KEVIN JAMES

t IsabellaValancyCrawford ..;.->;. - ^M m M ..M H '"...|f M '*M M k B:' ?*C '% ...Jit ~Ti Jffl Jf

Zhe Collected poems 3sabeUa Palancp <trawfort>

~~~w'."

J. W. GARVIN. RA.

ETHELWYN WETHERALD A^o 4 "TU Hx d 4. Tr-k Tm^-JWSu-." TV. R??M RoW.

fXJ?ONTO WILLIAM HRJGOS.

Depuis vingt-cinq ans, I'universite etudie de plus en plus la vie de la prolifique ecrivaine canadienne

Isabella Valancy Crawford. Cela denote un regain d'interet pour cette

Irlandaise de naissance, riche Dublinoise integree dans un milieu rural de

I'Amerique du Nord britannique, et dont la courte vie fut ponctuee par I'er

rance et une pauvrete croissante. Isabella Valancy Crawford est nee dans

la capitale irlandaise, d'un medecin irlandais forme a Londres, le protes

tant Stephen Dennis Crawford, et de son epouse Sydney Scott. Dans cette

famille appartenant resolument a la classe moyenne, les premieres

annees, en Irlande, sont enveloppees d'un certain mystere. Ainsi, on n'est

pas certain de la date de naissance d'lsabella, mais on croit qu'elle serait

nee en 1850. Ce que nous savons des premieres annees de la vie familiale

denote une sante precaire de la population, meme dans les regions

prosperes, apres la Famine, et temoigne de la vie itinerants que les

Crawford partageaient avec plusieurs de leurs compatriotes autant

protestants que catholiques, riches ou pauvres. Si, plus tard, Isabella se

decrit comme le sixieme enfant de sa famille, on sait peu de chose des cinq

aTnes, qui sont sans doute morts avant le demenagement des Crawford au

Wisconsin, ou une autre fille naTt en 1854. Cette naissance aux Etats-Unis

temoigne de la decision de la famille de se joindre aux emigrants

d'lrlande, quoiqu'un autre fils, Stephen, naTt lors d'un retour au pays,

deux ans plus tard. Par ailleurs, le Dr Crawford a fait aussi un bref sejour en Australie avant le depart de toute la famille pour le Canada, vers 1858.

JAMES ISABELLA VALANCY CRAWFORD 123

This content downloaded from 185.2.32.49 on Wed, 18 Jun 2014 17:14:09 PMAll use subject to JSTOR Terms and Conditions

La famille Crawford s'installe d'abord dans le village de Paisley, dans

le comte de Bruce de I'Ouest canadien, ou le pere d'lsabella recommence a

exercer la medecine. Paisley etait une petite communaute d'environ 150 per

sonnes situee au croisement des rivieres Meed et Saugeen. C'est la

qu'lsabella commence a composer la poesie ?

dont? Malcolm's Katie ?, un

poeme inspire des legendes et des images des Premieres Nations ? qui

devait I'elever a titre posthume au rang des ecrivains les plus importants de

I'epoque coloniale victorienne. Mais a Paisley, comme a Dublin, la famille

Crawford perd d'autres enfants. Elle quitte le village en 1864 pour celui de

Lakefield, de meme taille que Paisley mais dans le canton de Duoro, dans la

region des Lacs Kawartha. Cette region est connue pour etre celle de deux

autres ecrivaines canadiennes importantes, les soeurs Susanna Moodie et

Catharine Parr Trail, dont I'oeuvre, comme celle d'lsabella Valancy Crawford,

est riche d'images des vastes et parfois rudes etendues coloniales. Un

troisieme demenagement amene la famille dans une maison sur la place du

marche, dans le quartier urbain de Peterborough, capitale du comte du

meme nom. Cette ville, qui devait sa prosperite au commerce du bois, etait

aussi le siege de plusieurs manufactures, de magasins, d'eglises de six con

fessions differentes et de plusieurs succursales bancaires. A Peterborough, la poesie d'l. Crawford

? publiee a I'occasion dans la presse provinciale

?

a commence a attirer I'attention. Au XIXe siecle, les joumaux offraient en

effet aux poetes et aux ecrivains la possibilite d'un certain retentissement

dans leur region, et parfois au-dela, tout en leur fournissant un modeste

revenu. La poesie et les romans-feuilletons etant particulierement popu

lates aupres des lecteurs, des ecrivains locaux comme I. Crawford ont pu

gagner une audience grace a la presse de province. A la mort de son pere en

1875 ?

qui laissa une veuve, une fille chetive, Naomi, et un fils, Stephen,

lequel immigrera plus tard a Algoma, en Ontario ?, c'est Isabella qui devint

le soutien de famille. Cette responsabilite a d'abord paru facilitee par I'ob

tention d'un cheque de cent dollars, montant de la bourse d'un concours de

nouvelles, mais la faillite du donateur a aggrave les malheurs de la famille,

d'autant plus que survient, en 1876, le deces de Naomi. A partir de ce

moment, les Crawford ont erre d'une maison a I'autre a Toronto, tirant une

maigre subsistance de poemes, nouvelles et petits romans publies dans les

journaux de la ville, le Globe et le Telegram. C'est alors qu'lsabella Crawford

a fait parattre son premier et seul recueil de poesie, ? Old Spookses' Pass,

Malcolm's Katie, and Other Poems ?, en 1884. Sur un tirage de 1000 exem

plaires, on n'en a vendu que cinquante. Neanmoins, I'oeuvre a ete encen

see dans la revue litteraire locale The Week, et des critiques favorables ont

contribue a la reputation d'une ecrivaine en voie d'atteindre un statut inter

national, et qui allait susciter I'interet dans la presse britannique, mais

sans parvenir a bien gagner sa vie et celle de sa mere, ni meme a trouver

une certaine stabilite. Tout en collaborant regulierement a la presse provin

ciale, I. Crawford regrettait amerement que ses travaux aient ete dans

I'ensemble negliges par les grands periodiques litteraires canadiens.

124 CJIS VOLUME 26 NUMBER 2, VOLUME 27 NUMBER 1

This content downloaded from 185.2.32.49 on Wed, 18 Jun 2014 17:14:09 PMAll use subject to JSTOR Terms and Conditions

La vie d'Isabella Valancy Crawford et sa carriere prometteuse ont ete

breves. Le 12 fevrier 1887, Tun des meilleurs jeunes poetes et ecrivains de ce

jeune pays s'est eteint a I'age de 36 ans et fut enterre a Peterborough. Ce fut

I'avant-dernier enfant de la famille Crawford a mourir. Isabella ne s'est jamais mariee. Plus tard, ses oeuvres ont ete tirees de I'oubli grace aux efforts de

John William Garvin (nomme executeur litteraire de la famille Crawford par son frere Stephen en 1902) et de son epouse, Catherine Hale. Acquerant enfin une gloire posthume dans les grands periodiques litteraires, I'oeuvre

d'l. Crawford lui a assure une place parmi les ecrivains les plus importants du nouveau Dominion. Si sa courte vie a ete marquee par I'indigence, la

poetesse n'a cependant pas manque de recevoir des eloges de son vivant, a

la fois au pays et a I'etranger. Garvin et Hale ont plus tard souligne cette

reconnaissance, comme l'a fait recemment dans ses recherches et dans ses

ecrits la celebre poetesse canadienne Dorothy Livesay. Celle-ci, qui s'est

beaucoup penchee sur I'oeuvre d'l. Crawford, affirme avoir retrace la

genealogie de sa famille depuis I'immigration en Irlande des ancetres ecos

sais, au XVIle siecle. Si la poesie d'l. Crawford est rarement explicitement

autobiographique, elle porte la marque profonde de ses tentatives de com

prendre et d'integrer la culture et le paysage coloniaux. Sa courte vie, sou

vent endeuillee, fut caracterisee par la lutte et I'errance. Nee dans I'aisance

relative d'une societe professionnelle a Dublin, Isabella Valancy Crawford n'a

pu se realiser que partiellement dans I'ecriture, a cause d'une mort pre

maturee. On reconnatt cependant aujourd'hui son influence pendant les

annees de formation de la litterature canadienne anglaise.

Sources bibliographiques

Burns, Robert Alan. "The Poet in Her Time: Isabella Valancy Crawford's Social,

Economic, and Political Views." Studies in Canadian Literature 14 (1989): 1: 30-53.

The Canada Directory for 1857-58, Containing Names of Professional and Business Men and of the Principal Inhabitants, in the Cities, Towns and Villages Throughout the Province, vol. I, A-Riche. Montreal: John Lovell, 1857.

Farmiloe, Dorothy. Isabella Valancy Crawford: The Life and Legends. Ottawa:

Tecumseh Press, 1983.

Galvin, Elizabeth McNeill. Isabella Valancy Crawford: We Scarcely Knew Her.

Toronto: Natural Heritage/Natural History, Inc., 1994.

Hale, Katherine. Isabella Valancy Crawford. Toronto: Ryerson Press, n.d.

Ross, Catherine "Isabella Valancy Crawford, "

dans Oxford Companion to Canadian

Literature, 2ieme edd. Toronto: University of Oxford Press, 1997, 238-9.

"I. V. Crawford: The Growing Legend." Canadian Literature (Summer 1979): 81:143-7.

Livesay, Dorothy. "Crawford, Isabella Valancy", Dictionary of Canadian Biography,

vol.11,1880-1900. Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 1982, 212-14.

"The Life of Isabella Valancy Crawford", in The Crawford Symposium, edited by Frank M. Tierney. Ottawa: University of Ottawa Press, 1979, 5-10.

Lovell's Gazetteer of British North America (Montreal: John Lovell, 1873).

Petrone, Penny. "In search of Isabella Valancy Crawford" dans The Crawford Symposium mis au point par Frank. M. Tierney. Ottawa: University of Ottawa Press, 1979,11-18.

"The Imaginative Achievement of Isabella Valancy Crawford". Dissertation de

doctorat, University of Alberta, 1977.

JAMES ISABELLA VALANCY CRAWFORD 125

This content downloaded from 185.2.32.49 on Wed, 18 Jun 2014 17:14:09 PMAll use subject to JSTOR Terms and Conditions