Ernest Buckler Biography

Canadian novelist, born in Dalhousie West, Nova Scotia, educated at Dalhousie University and the University of Toronto. His most famous work is his best-selling first novel, The Mountain and the Valley (1952), a seminal contribution to the literature of Maritime Canada. Told mainly in flashback, it is a Kunstlerroman which focuses on the figure of an unfulfilled artist and his romantic desire for a life beyond the farming community in which he grows up. Ox Bells and Fireflies (1968) is an imaginative memoir of Buckler's childhood, which celebrates a bygone rural era in a finely wrought style that links physical experiences and subjective speculation very effectively. Buckler also published a second novel, The Cruelest Month (1963); The Rebellion of Young David (1975), a collection of short stories; and Whirligig (1977), a book of humorous essays and poems.