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Ethel Wilson
(1888-1980)

Active: 1937-1964 in Canada, North America

(Ethel Davis Bryant)

By Peggy Martin (University of Saskatchewan)

Indexing Data:

  • Active In: Canada, North America
  • Born In: South Africa
  • Activity: Novelist, Story Writer, Essayist

Life, Works and Times

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Ethel Wilson was celebrated in her lifetime and continues to be remembered as an accomplished literary stylist. Her work is often viewed in the context of Canadian modernist fiction. Between 1937 and 1964, she published six volumes of fiction, as well as a number of stories and essays in magazines and journals, but she is best known for her short novels Hetty Dorval and Swamp Angel, the two novellas published as The Equations of Love, and the frequently anthologized stories collected in Mrs. Golightly and Other Stories. Throughout her career, Wilson argued against the idea of a “Canadian novel”, preferring instead to write “about a particular place”, about relationships, and about

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First published 00 May 2000

Citation: Martin, Peggy. "Ethel Wilson". The Literary Encyclopedia. 30 April 2000.
[http://www.litencyc.com/php/speople.php?rec=true&UID=4750, accessed 20 November 2009.]