Identity area
Reference code
Title
Date(s)
- 1970 - 2017 (Creation)
Level of description
Extent and medium
27 boxes and items (5.5 metres)
Context area
Name of creator
Biographical history
J. Edward Chamberlin was born in Vancouver, and educated at the universities of British Columbia, Oxford and Toronto. Since 1970, he has been on the faculty of the University of Toronto, where he is University Professor Emeritus of English and Comparative Literature; but his interest in stories and songs has taken him around the world, to the hunters of the Kalahari and the herders of Mongolia as well as to the islands of the Caribbean, the England of Queen Victoria, and the wide-ranging literary and cultural traditions that have shaped the Americas. He was Senior Research Associate with the Royal Commission on Aboriginal Peoples and Poetry Editor of Saturday Night magazine, and is a Fellow of the Royal Society and an Officer of the Order of Canada. He has lectured widely on literary, historical and cultural issues; and his books include The Harrowing of Eden: White Attitudes Towards Native Americans (1975), Ripe Was the Drowsy Hour: The Age of Oscar Wilde (1977), Oscar Wilde’s London (1987), Come Back To Me My Language: Poetry and the West Indies (1993), If This Is Your Land, Where Are Your Stories? Finding Common Ground (2003), Horse: How the Horse Has Shaped Civilizations (2006); A Covenant in Wonder with the World: The Power of Stories and Songs (2012);and Island: How Islands Transform the World (2013).
Archival history
Immediate source of acquisition or transfer
Content and structure area
Scope and content
Includes correspondence with various poets in his capacity as Saturday Night poetry editor, some with submissions, and copies of replies, as well as correspondence with other writers and drafts of their work, including Rachel Manley, Lorna Goodison, Derek Walcott (along with the nomination for Walcott to receive the Nobel Prize for Literature in 1992), Anne Michaels and Bruce St. John. It also includes books, pamphlets,print and ephemera pertaining to West Indian and Caribbean Literature, history and culture.
Appraisal, destruction and scheduling
Accruals
System of arrangement
Conditions of access and use area
Conditions governing access
Conditions governing reproduction
Language of material
- English