Harold Standish
Encyclopedia
Harold Edwin Standish was a Canadian
poet
and novelist, best known for his 1949 novel The Golden Time
and his long poem
The Lake of Souls (1957). A significant Canadian modernist
along with the likes of Earle Birney
, Douglas LePan
, and Sheila Watson, Standish was known for his experiments with literary form and skeptical views of Canadian nationalism
at a time, during the 1950s and 60s, when many Canadians sought to establish a distinctive literary tradition for Canada
. Largely forgotten in recent years, his work remains significant for its vivid evocations of working class
life in rural Southern Ontario
.
, but shortly thereafter moved with his family to Chatham, Ontario
. In an autobiographical essay
in A View From the Edge (1971), Standish describes how his alcoholic father beat him and his three brothers mercilessly, leaving life-long psychological wounds that found expression in many of Standish's poems. After leaving high school at age fourteen, Standish worked as an apprentice to a millwright
, before setting off on a cross-Canada excursion by train in 1937. Settling in Vancouver
for a time, Standish had trouble finding employment because of the lingering Great Depression
. Returning to Ontario after the outbreak of World War II
, he attempted to enlist for overseas service but was rejected because of a heart murmur
. Standish instead spent the early years of the war working on tobacco farms in the area around Lake Erie
, an experience that would later influence the setting of his first novel, The Golden Time
.
, James Joyce
, T. S. Eliot
and other writers that came to influence Standish's work. While working as a laborer in Ontario, Standish kept copious drafts of poems and notes for short stories
, but lack of formal education prevented him from developing the distinctive style he sought. In 1943, Standish moved back to his birthplace of Toronto, where he enrolled in English literature
courses at the University of Toronto
while writing and working at a variety of temporary jobs.
A number of Standish's poems appeared in such little magazines as Contemporary Verse and Northern Review
, and he released his first self-financed collection, a mimeographed chapbook
entitled Stripped Bare in the Afterlife in 1943. Despite the chapbook having sold a mere sixty copies, Standish managed to land a publishing agreement with the tiny imprint
Bluenose Books for the release of his first full-length monograph
, Neighbours and Other Poems (1944). Several other collections followed over the next two decades.
By the late forties, Standish had added fiction to his creative pursuits. His first novel, The Golden Time, published by Macmillan
in 1949, sold well and won glowing reviews, although it failed to win that year's Governor General's Award
for fiction, the prize going instead to Standish's friend Philip Child. The 1950s was Standish's most productive period, with another novel and several more poetry collections appearing to growing acclaim — but poor sales. After a short period as a full-time, professional author, Standish found it necessary to supplement his income with work as a copy-editor and labourer. Standish continued to write and publish throughout the 1960s, however, including essays for various Canadian and American
periodicals that were collected later in A View From the Edge.
in the mid-1960s and was increasingly confined to hospitals and long periods at his home outside Toronto. His wife, Marilla Standish, assisted him in preparing his manuscripts for publication, but eventually Standish's health declined even further as his heart began to deteriorate. The latter condition inspired the ironic
title of his final book of new poetry, A Crisis at Heart (1970, published in Europe
as Autumn Moon). Shortly before his death he chose the poems for the book Selected Poems. In the introduction to that volume, Miriam Waddington
claimed that Standish was "a voice destined to last in Canadian literature," although his death in 1972 caused much of his work to be forgotten. To date, no re-prints of Standish's original works have appeared, although a final selection of poems and essays, Harold Standish: A Retrospective, appeared in 1976.
Canadian literature
Canadian literature is literature originating from Canada. Collectively it is often called CanLit. Some criticism of Canadian literature has focused on nationalistic and regional themes, although this is only a small portion of Canadian Literary criticism...
poet
Poet
A poet is a person who writes poetry. A poet's work can be literal, meaning that his work is derived from a specific event, or metaphorical, meaning that his work can take on many meanings and forms. Poets have existed since antiquity, in nearly all languages, and have produced works that vary...
and novelist, best known for his 1949 novel The Golden Time
The Golden Time
The Golden Time is a 1949 novel by the Canadian author Harold Standish. It tells the story of the McGibbon family of Chatham, Ontario as they struggle with various troubles, including alcoholism, domestic abuse, and their ultimate triumph as owners of a tobacco farm in the countryside near Chatham...
and his long poem
Long poem
The long poem is a literary genre including all poetry of considerable length. Though the definition of a long poem is vague and broad, the genre includes some of the most important poetry ever written....
The Lake of Souls (1957). A significant Canadian modernist
Modernism
Modernism, in its broadest definition, is modern thought, character, or practice. More specifically, the term describes the modernist movement, its set of cultural tendencies and array of associated cultural movements, originally arising from wide-scale and far-reaching changes to Western society...
along with the likes of Earle Birney
Earle Birney
Earle Alfred Birney, OC, FRSC was a distinguished Canadian poet and novelist, who twice won the Governor General's Award, Canada's top literary honor, for his poetry.-Life:...
, Douglas LePan
Douglas LePan
Douglas Valentine LePan, OC, FRSC was a Canadian diplomat, poet, novelist and professor of literature.Born in Toronto, Ontario, LePan was educated at the University of Toronto, at Harvard , and at Merton College, Oxford University...
, and Sheila Watson, Standish was known for his experiments with literary form and skeptical views of Canadian nationalism
Nationalism
Nationalism is a political ideology that involves a strong identification of a group of individuals with a political entity defined in national terms, i.e. a nation. In the 'modernist' image of the nation, it is nationalism that creates national identity. There are various definitions for what...
at a time, during the 1950s and 60s, when many Canadians sought to establish a distinctive literary tradition for Canada
Canada
Canada is a North American country consisting of ten provinces and three territories. Located in the northern part of the continent, it extends from the Atlantic Ocean in the east to the Pacific Ocean in the west, and northward into the Arctic Ocean...
. Largely forgotten in recent years, his work remains significant for its vivid evocations of working class
Working class
Working class is a term used in the social sciences and in ordinary conversation to describe those employed in lower tier jobs , often extending to those in unemployment or otherwise possessing below-average incomes...
life in rural Southern Ontario
Southern Ontario
Southern Ontario is a region of the province of Ontario, Canada that lies south of the French River and Algonquin Park. Depending on the inclusion of the Parry Sound and Muskoka districts, its surface area would cover between 14 to 15% of the province. It is the southernmost region of...
.
Early life
Standish was born in TorontoToronto
Toronto is the provincial capital of Ontario and the largest city in Canada. It is located in Southern Ontario on the northwestern shore of Lake Ontario. A relatively modern city, Toronto's history dates back to the late-18th century, when its land was first purchased by the British monarchy from...
, but shortly thereafter moved with his family to Chatham, Ontario
Ontario
Ontario is a province of Canada, located in east-central Canada. It is Canada's most populous province and second largest in total area. It is home to the nation's most populous city, Toronto, and the nation's capital, Ottawa....
. In an autobiographical essay
Autobiography
An autobiography is a book about the life of a person, written by that person.-Origin of the term:...
in A View From the Edge (1971), Standish describes how his alcoholic father beat him and his three brothers mercilessly, leaving life-long psychological wounds that found expression in many of Standish's poems. After leaving high school at age fourteen, Standish worked as an apprentice to a millwright
Millwright
A millwright is a craftsman or tradesman engaged with the construction and maintenance of machinery.Early millwrights were specialist carpenters who erected machines used in agriculture, food processing and processing lumber and paper...
, before setting off on a cross-Canada excursion by train in 1937. Settling in Vancouver
Vancouver
Vancouver is a coastal seaport city on the mainland of British Columbia, Canada. It is the hub of Greater Vancouver, which, with over 2.3 million residents, is the third most populous metropolitan area in the country,...
for a time, Standish had trouble finding employment because of the lingering Great Depression
Great Depression
The Great Depression was a severe worldwide economic depression in the decade preceding World War II. The timing of the Great Depression varied across nations, but in most countries it started in about 1929 and lasted until the late 1930s or early 1940s...
. Returning to Ontario after the outbreak of World War II
World War II
World War II, or the Second World War , was a global conflict lasting from 1939 to 1945, involving most of the world's nations—including all of the great powers—eventually forming two opposing military alliances: the Allies and the Axis...
, he attempted to enlist for overseas service but was rejected because of a heart murmur
Heart murmur
Murmurs are extra heart sounds that are produced as a result of turbulent blood flow that is sufficient to produce audible noise. Most murmurs can only be heard with the assistance of a stethoscope ....
. Standish instead spent the early years of the war working on tobacco farms in the area around Lake Erie
Lake Erie
Lake Erie is the fourth largest lake of the five Great Lakes in North America, and the tenth largest globally. It is the southernmost, shallowest, and smallest by volume of the Great Lakes and therefore also has the shortest average water residence time. It is bounded on the north by the...
, an experience that would later influence the setting of his first novel, The Golden Time
The Golden Time
The Golden Time is a 1949 novel by the Canadian author Harold Standish. It tells the story of the McGibbon family of Chatham, Ontario as they struggle with various troubles, including alcoholism, domestic abuse, and their ultimate triumph as owners of a tobacco farm in the countryside near Chatham...
.
Literary career
A voracious reader since childhood, Standish began writing poetry in his teens but did not consider it a serious pursuit until after a chance meeting with the young Earle Birney in Vancouver. Birney encouraged Standish to write more intensely and introduced him to the work of Wyndham LewisWyndham Lewis
Percy Wyndham Lewis was an English painter and author . He was a co-founder of the Vorticist movement in art, and edited the literary magazine of the Vorticists, BLAST...
, James Joyce
James Joyce
James Augustine Aloysius Joyce was an Irish novelist and poet, considered to be one of the most influential writers in the modernist avant-garde of the early 20th century...
, T. S. Eliot
T. S. Eliot
Thomas Stearns "T. S." Eliot OM was a playwright, literary critic, and arguably the most important English-language poet of the 20th century. Although he was born an American he moved to the United Kingdom in 1914 and was naturalised as a British subject in 1927 at age 39.The poem that made his...
and other writers that came to influence Standish's work. While working as a laborer in Ontario, Standish kept copious drafts of poems and notes for short stories
Short story
A short story is a work of fiction that is usually written in prose, often in narrative format. This format tends to be more pointed than longer works of fiction, such as novellas and novels. Short story definitions based on length differ somewhat, even among professional writers, in part because...
, but lack of formal education prevented him from developing the distinctive style he sought. In 1943, Standish moved back to his birthplace of Toronto, where he enrolled in English literature
English literature
English literature is the literature written in the English language, including literature composed in English by writers not necessarily from England; for example, Robert Burns was Scottish, James Joyce was Irish, Joseph Conrad was Polish, Dylan Thomas was Welsh, Edgar Allan Poe was American, J....
courses at the University of Toronto
University of Toronto
The University of Toronto is a public research university in Toronto, Ontario, Canada, situated on the grounds that surround Queen's Park. It was founded by royal charter in 1827 as King's College, the first institution of higher learning in Upper Canada...
while writing and working at a variety of temporary jobs.
A number of Standish's poems appeared in such little magazines as Contemporary Verse and Northern Review
Northern Review
Northern Review was a Montreal-based literary magazine published in Canada between 1945 and 1956. It resulted from the merger between two earlier magazines, Preview and First Statement, both of which were also Montreal-based. Poet and literary critic John Sutherland, who founded First Statement,...
, and he released his first self-financed collection, a mimeographed chapbook
Chapbook
A chapbook is a pocket-sized booklet. The term chap-book was formalized by bibliophiles of the 19th century, as a variety of ephemera , popular or folk literature. It includes many kinds of printed material such as pamphlets, political and religious tracts, nursery rhymes, poetry, folk tales,...
entitled Stripped Bare in the Afterlife in 1943. Despite the chapbook having sold a mere sixty copies, Standish managed to land a publishing agreement with the tiny imprint
Imprint
In the publishing industry, an imprint can mean several different things:* As a piece of bibliographic information about a book, it refers to the name and address of the book's publisher and its date of publication as given at the foot or on the verso of its title page.* It can mean a trade name...
Bluenose Books for the release of his first full-length monograph
Monograph
A monograph is a work of writing upon a single subject, usually by a single author.It is often a scholarly essay or learned treatise, and may be released in the manner of a book or journal article. It is by definition a single document that forms a complete text in itself...
, Neighbours and Other Poems (1944). Several other collections followed over the next two decades.
By the late forties, Standish had added fiction to his creative pursuits. His first novel, The Golden Time, published by Macmillan
Macmillan Publishers
Macmillan Publishers Ltd, also known as The Macmillan Group, is a privately held international publishing company owned by Georg von Holtzbrinck Publishing Group. It has offices in 41 countries worldwide and operates in more than thirty others.-History:...
in 1949, sold well and won glowing reviews, although it failed to win that year's Governor General's Award
Governor General's Award
The Governor General's Awards are a collection of awards presented by the Governor General of Canada, marking distinction in a number of academic, artistic and social fields. The first was conceived in 1937 by Lord Tweedsmuir, a prolific author of fiction and non-fiction who created the Governor...
for fiction, the prize going instead to Standish's friend Philip Child. The 1950s was Standish's most productive period, with another novel and several more poetry collections appearing to growing acclaim — but poor sales. After a short period as a full-time, professional author, Standish found it necessary to supplement his income with work as a copy-editor and labourer. Standish continued to write and publish throughout the 1960s, however, including essays for various Canadian and American
United States
The United States of America is a federal constitutional republic comprising fifty states and a federal district...
periodicals that were collected later in A View From the Edge.
Decline and death
Standish was stricken with liver diseaseLiver disease
Liver disease is a broad term describing any single number of diseases affecting the liver.-Diseases:* Hepatitis, inflammation of the liver, caused mainly by various viruses but also by some poisons , autoimmunity or hereditary conditions...
in the mid-1960s and was increasingly confined to hospitals and long periods at his home outside Toronto. His wife, Marilla Standish, assisted him in preparing his manuscripts for publication, but eventually Standish's health declined even further as his heart began to deteriorate. The latter condition inspired the ironic
Irony
Irony is a rhetorical device, literary technique, or situation in which there is a sharp incongruity or discordance that goes beyond the simple and evident intention of words or actions...
title of his final book of new poetry, A Crisis at Heart (1970, published in Europe
Europe
Europe is, by convention, one of the world's seven continents. Comprising the westernmost peninsula of Eurasia, Europe is generally 'divided' from Asia to its east by the watershed divides of the Ural and Caucasus Mountains, the Ural River, the Caspian and Black Seas, and the waterways connecting...
as Autumn Moon). Shortly before his death he chose the poems for the book Selected Poems. In the introduction to that volume, Miriam Waddington
Miriam Waddington
Miriam Waddington was a Canadian poet, short story writer and translator.Born in Winnipeg, Manitoba, she studied English at the University of Toronto and social work the University of Pennsylvania . She worked for many years as a social worker in Montreal...
claimed that Standish was "a voice destined to last in Canadian literature," although his death in 1972 caused much of his work to be forgotten. To date, no re-prints of Standish's original works have appeared, although a final selection of poems and essays, Harold Standish: A Retrospective, appeared in 1976.
Poetry
- Stripped Bare in the Afterlife (chapbookChapbookA chapbook is a pocket-sized booklet. The term chap-book was formalized by bibliophiles of the 19th century, as a variety of ephemera , popular or folk literature. It includes many kinds of printed material such as pamphlets, political and religious tracts, nursery rhymes, poetry, folk tales,...
, 1943) - Neighbours and Other Poems (1944)
- The Forest of Fear (1947)
- Amelia's Gone (1951)
- The Wonder of the Wind (1955)
- The Lake of Souls and Other Poems (1957)
- New and Newer Poems (1962)
- A Crisis at Heart (1970) (U.K. title: August Moon, 1971)
- Selected Poems (1971)
- Harold Standish: A Retrospective (poems and essays, posthumous 1976)