Man Should Rejoice is one of two hitherto unpublished novels by acclaimed novelist Hugh MacLennan. Completed in 1937 and left unpublished due to economic conditions during the Great Depression, it lay in the McGill archives until now.

This critical edition of Man Should Rejoice , which is also the first-ever publication of the work, is comprised of a critical introduction, a bibliography of published and unpublished sources, a fully-edited text based on a typescript of the novel, a list of textual emendations, and explanatory notes.

The introduction draws upon extensive research undertaken in three Canadian archival collections located in Montreal and Calgary. It provides relevant historical, cultural, and biographical context for the novel.

From hundreds of archival documents, Colin Hill reconstructs a textual history of the novel’s production that acknowledges the crucial contribution of Dorothy Duncan, who heavily revised the text and assisted MacLennan behind the scenes. Hill also explores the critical reception of MacLennan’s fiction from the 1930s to the present.

This book is published in English.

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Man Should Rejoice est un des deux romans inédits du grand romancier Hugh MacLennan. Terminé en 1937, il fut victime de la Grande Crise et fut conservé dans les archives de McGill jusqu’à maintenant.

Cette édition critique de Man Should Rejoice comprend une introduction critique, une bibliographie des sources publiées et non publiées, le texte révisé tiré d’un tapuscrit du roman, une liste des emendations textuelles, et des notes explicatives.

L’introduction, qui repose sur des recherches archivistiques poussées de trois collections canadiennes situées à Montréal et à Calgary, fournit le contexte historique, culturel et biographique du roman.

Colin Hill érige l’histoire textuelle de l’écriture de ce roman à partir de centaines de documents d’archives qui jettent la lumière sur la contribution clé de Dorothy Duncan, qui a révisé en profondeur le texte et a aidé MacLennan en coulisses. Il explore par ailleurs la réception critique de la fiction de MacLennan, des années 1930 jusqu’à aujourd’hui.

Ce livre est publié en anglais.

Colin Hill is Associate Professor at the Department of English, University of Toronto. His research focuses on modernist Canadian fiction. He is particularly interested in modernist archives, aesthetics, literary histories, and editorial practices, and is working on a book about modernism and Canadian cities. He is also editor of the University of Toronto Quarterly.

Colin Hill's profile page

Born in Glace Bay, Nova Scotia, Hugh MacLennan (1907-1990) taught at McGill University from 1951 to 1981 and wrote novels and essays that helped define Canadian literature. His novels include Barometer Rising (1941), Two Solitudes (1945), Each Man's Son (1951), The Watch That Ends the Night (1959), Return of the Sphinx (1967), and Voices in Time (1980). He also published several nonfiction works, including Cross Country (1949), Thirty and Three (1955), The Scotchman’s Return and Other Essays (1960), and The Colour of Canada (1967).

Hugh MacLennan's profile page

Hugh MacLennan’s early novel Man Should Rejoice (c. 1937) has finally found a publisher in the Canadian Literature Collection, a series edited by Dean Irvine for the University of Ottawa Press. It is eighty years late in appearing, but it makes an important addition to MacLennan’s oeuvre, offering insightful new perspectives on the beginnings of his writing career. Carefully edited by Colin Hill, it will force interested readers to rethink past assessments of a writer seen by many as the quintessential, somewhat predictable, Canadian realist.

https://canlit.ca/article/rejoicing-in-maclennan/

Man Should Rejoice certainly deserves to be published at last, even though -- as its editor Colin Hill admits -- it "is not MacLennan's lost masterpiece". It is nevertheless, a remarkable, compelling novel.

Faye Hammill