Marian Engel

"Marian Engel: Life in Letters captures Marian Engel's life as a writer, a narrative that spans her youthful travels in Europe to her early death in 1985. In addition to the letters sent to her friends, this collection includes letters by Engel to critics, to editors, to granting officers, to publishers, and a brilliant letter to a chief librarian lambasting him for, among other things, the library's prejudice against 'Domesticity.' Accompanied by insightful commentary, these letters are rich in detail, filling in the fine points in the life not only of one Canadian writer, but of a nation of writers."--BOOK JACKET.

A Novel

Published later under the title "One-Way Street"

Novel

"Marian Engel emerged as a writer during that period in Canada when nationalism increased and "new feminism" dawned. Although she is recognized as a distinguished woman of letters, she has not been widely studied consequently we know relatively little about her and her craft. The material collected in Marian Engel's Notebooks: "Ali mon cahier, ecoute" is a major step in redressing, that neglect."--BOOK JACKET. "Extracts carefully chosen by Christl Verduyn from Marian Engel's forty-nine notebooks - notebooks which Engel began in the late 1940s and maintained until her death in 1985 - track Engel's creative development, illustrate her commitment to the craft of writing and document her growth as a major Canadian writer. The notebooks also portray Engel's surprising leaps of logic, her fascination with the bizarre, the eclecticism of her reading and the depth and variety of her thinking. Finally, they present moving documentation of a woman facing cancer and early death."--BOOK JACKET. "Christl Verduyn's illuminating introductory discussions to each of the notebooks, unobtrusively guide us in the reading of these some times difficult writings."--BOOK JACKET.