Bringing Landscape Home in the Writings of Jane Urquhart

The powerful presence behind this book is, of course, Jane Urquhart herself, and it is to her that the book is dedicated with our thanks and compliments. We all appreciated her being with us, her patience with our papers, her responses to our questions, and her unforgettably elegant speech and warmth, which made the conference room sparkle with wit and inspiration.

The articles collected in this book were submitted not only by Canadianists, but also by scholars able to mediate between their own literary interests and Jane Urquhart's oeuvre. Individuals who were present at the conference came away 'altered' by the landscapes in Jane Urquhart's fiction, which brought home important truths. The book opens with my interview with Jane Urquhart, which gave the title to the whole collection. The author says the following in response to my last question: 'I would like to be able to collect small nineteenth century landscape paintings. And one of the things about the smallest of them is that you could have many many many on the wall. So I can bring the beautiful landscapes of the world home and put them in my house, and keep them safe as they disappear from the earth.' Interestingly, the author has already collected a number of such landscapes in her writings, and it is to these landscapes that the articles in the book turn in order to explore not only the text, but also the textures of memory, power and subversion.

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