With this anthology, Yves Brunelle made available to the English reader and student the entire repertory of nineteenth century French fiction in Canada.
This book includes the full range of this literature in extract form, from Philippe Aubert de Gaspé, the Younger, The Treasure Seeker, or The Influence of a Book (1837) (Le chercheur de trésor ou l'influence d'un livre) to Pamphile LeMay's Blood and Gold (Sang et or) from his Contes vrais of 1899.
How often have we heard of Patrice Lacombe's The Family Farm (1846) (La terre paternelle) or Pierre-J.-O. Chauveau's Charles Guérin (1847)? These fables romances contain a wealth of folklore; they reflect the motivation and spirit of a whole people from its beginning on this continent in the seventeenth century to the end of the nineteenth.
The social history as preserved by French Canada's storytellers, romancers and novelists is more immediate and speaks to the reader in an unambiguous way that formal historians rarely achieve.
Includes works by Philippe Aubert de Gaspé, Amédée Papineau, Napoléon Aubin, Pierre Petitclair, Alphonse Poitras, L.-A. Oliver, Pierre-J.-O. Chauveau, Abbé Henri-Raymond Casgrain, Patrice Lacombe, Joseph-Charles Taché, and Joseph Marmette.