Professor Malcolm Ross.
A scholar, a writer of many learned books, a Professor of English Literature (teaching such people as Margaret Laurence and Adele Wiseman), a patient and kindly mentor to struggling writers, an academic administrator, a recipient of many honourary degrees and the Order of Canada - he is a distinguished and warm-hearted man.
Nationally recognized as an elder statesman of Canadian literature, he has worked his whole life to make Canadian literature recognized and accessible to readers. Through his teaching in the English Departments of universities in Ontario and Nova Scotia, he developed courses in Canadian literature that previously did not exist.
His most famous–and perhaps most valuable– contribution to Canadian Literary history is to have been the imagination and the power behind the creation of The New Canadian Library – mass-market publications valued by Canadian writers. To support those Canadian literature courses, he pressured publishers to make the books available through the New Canadian Library Series. He worked as editor of the series, published by McClelland & Stewart, for 25 years, bringing out 168 titles and selling hundreds of thousands of books before he retired, including authors such as Morley Callaghan, Sinclair Ross, Stephen Leacock, Margaret Atwood, and Margaret Lawrence.
The significance of this cannot be over-emphasized. Books by these Canadian authors could not be widely read and appreciated until inexpensive versions of their work became available to those who wished to study them. After the appearance of those books, the whole field of Canadian literature changed.
New generations of students discovered the value of our own literature, and had easy access to it. It is no coincidence that after the New Canadian Library became widely used, new writers started to emerge out of the woodwork. They knew, suddenly, that it was a worth-while thing to do to be a writer. Authors owe Malcolm a great debt of for furthering their careers. Canadians owe him a great debt for making these outstanding authors available in inexpensive editions. Without Malcolm Ross’s initiatives and persistence, this might not have happened as quickly as it did, or with as much success.
|
