Canadian Literature

the first periodical to be devoted exclusively to critical consideration of writing produced in Canada. It has appeared quarterly since its establishment in 1959 by George Woodcock at the University of British Columbia, Vancouver. Woodcock was succeeded in 1977 by W. H. New. The journal's inception marked the growing confidence in the value of indigenous writing which was intrinsic to the strengthening belief in an independent cultural identity felt in Canada from the late 1950s onward. Woodcock's desire to avoid the subordination of critical objectivity to nationalist evaluations of literature has been fulfilled in the magazine's rigorous and eclectic ethos, which is equally free of doctrinaire adherence to any body of literary theory. Although criticism of literature in English has always been its first concern, Canadian Literature also publishes poetry and occasional samples of contemporary fiction, and regularly features commentary in French. Numerous anthologies of articles and essays from its pages have appeared, including Woodcock's editions of The Sixties: Canadian Writers and Writing of the Decade (1969) and Poets and Critics: Essays from ‘Canadian Literature’, 1966–1974 (1974).