The "Autobiography" files come under the following separate headings: a) interviews with Dorothy Livesay, and her autobiographical statements and essays; b) journals of the writer consisting of entries in note-form on separate sheets of paper; c) Livesay's diaries and calendars, or schedules; and d) notes to herself, which she jotted down and kept for numerous reasons and purposes. To some extent, this is the most intimate and unguarded section of the Livesay Collection, and has to be studied with some care for clues to a deeper understanding of the author. There is great value in the "Autobiography" files for scholars who wish to challenge Dorothy Livesay's public and formal statements about herself and her work, statements which are repeated and left unchallenged in most Livesay interviews to this date.

"Interviews and autobiographical statements and essays" contain three types of material. The first consists of interviews with the author, taken by freelance interviewers, journalists, and radio commentators. The Collection contains both published and unpublished copies of interviews. The researcher can measure the extent to which Dorothy Livesay's statements have been edited by comparing the published copies to their manuscripts, and also the quality of Livesay's answers to interviewers by comparing similar statements in different interviews. A second type of autobiographical material is a selection of autobiographical statements the writer has penned, both published and unpublished. A third kind are essays of an autobiographical nature. These essays are perhaps the most sustained of the comments on herself in the Collection as a whole, and may have been intended for eventual publication. The essays are source material for some of Livesay's work, and provide insights into the development of Dorothy Livesay's work.

Not all of the published interviews with Dorothy Livesay are in this Collection, but there are enough to show the nature of the questions that concern interviewers, and the quality of Livesay's answers. Three kinds of concerns surface in the interviews- -political, literary, and social. Since Livesay was an active socialist and writer in the Thirties, some interviews reflect her political bias, her knowledge of Canadian socialist history, and the function of the writer in relation to politics. Others search out Livesay's comments on the art of writing, the climate for writing in Canada, and on her own work. The social concerns expressed in these interviews have to do with feminism, an issue on which she became more vocal during the Seventies. Livesay makes statements about all these subjects, but repeats herself from interview to interview, without ever probing deeply into any given issue. Publicly, Livesay proposes a set of opinions, but seldom an analysis. Often the interviews will show more of the interviewer's position than the interviewee's personality. (The same problem emerges in the clippings on Livesay and in newspaper articles written by journalists.) A typical example of this common problem is an introductory comment in an interview from The Manitoban, October 28, 1976, entitled "Dorothy Livesay and CVII, The Canadian Poets' Friends." The interviewer states that "before my eyes the sweet little old lady poet had turned into a huckster, albeit a huckster for the muse," because Livesay showed her a copy of Contemporary Verse II. Similarly, in The Fulcrum, March 2, 1977, she is described as having "all the grace and warmth of a communal grandmother."

Among the manuscripts of interviews are several fascinating conversations. Most notable are an interview by Mike Heenan, probably for CBC Radio in 1975, and a 1967 interview by Robert McNutt, also likely for radio, or perhaps from a class situation. The transcriptions of radio interviews read like conversations and show the way Dorothy Livesay interacts with people. The Heenan interview, for example, contains a good deal of humour on the interviewer's part, which Livesay seems to miss or does not respond to in kind. The McNutt interview is also refreshingly lively, but there Livesay appears more in tune with her questioner. The rapport between the two speakers in all the interviews is the central matter of importance, and the manuscripts show when such rapport has been edited into the piece for publication, and when that is not the case.

Among the manuscripts are complete copies of a 1975 interview by Bernice Lever, published in the Canadian Forum, and an interview by Alan Twigg, published in the NeWest Review. There is also a manuscript in this file of a 1947 radio interview by Ellen Harris, on Livesay's observations of Britain when she was a European correspondent for The Star in 1946. The researcher can get a good sense of the young Dorothy Livesay's clear-headedness from this piece, and her level-headed responses show her keen observational skills and facilities as a journalist. Livesay is far more direct and to the point in this early interview than she is in the later ones, where she often wanders off the point under discussion. One characteristic of the later interviews, the scholar will find, is Livesay's ability to sidestep a question, or create a new issue out of a query. She reserves the right, in the later conversations, to provide answers that do not correspond to the questions, leaving the interviewer with the task of circling back to the original point.

The file of published copies of Livesay's autobiographical statements is very small and serves as an example of what remains of her essays and notes once they have been edited for publication. The researcher will find that Dorothy Livesay has been an avid editor of her own writing all her life, and many drafts of any given work exist. This is especially true of her autobiographical pieces, and the bulk of her essays, lectures, poems and stories are autobiographical in nature. It is as if the writer is unable to decide what kind of self-portrait to draw, what emphasis to place on events in her life, and what opinions she should have of what has transpired. In this file there is an early documentary-style piece by Livesay on her parents (mainly her father) who influenced her greatly. She provides examples of the writings of both parents and includes her own poem "Lament." This piece, published in The Canadian Bookman, provides an early example of Livesay's interest in "pot-pourri" essays, where documents are quoted without processing or bridging of the texts. Another statement in this file is "Notes from a Diary," from The Canadian Review, 1977. Here is an example of the kind of prose fragments Dorothy Livesay has been jotting down all her life. This one concerns an encounter with a cab driver and the prejudice older people have to face in society.

The unpublished autobiographical file contains both brief and longer pieces by Livesay on herself, her life, and her work. Some of these notes and reflections could be considered journal entries, but are filed here because apparently they are meant for publication as essays of a kind. For example, there are Livesay's notes on her childhood, and her relationship with her father. Here she quotes from the Diary of Anne Frank Anne's thoughts about her father and her feelings of inadequacy, words which may well echo Dorothy Livesay's feelings about her own father. Another note tells of Dorothy's childhood fears and nervous illnesses. She would lie in bed with imagined terrors, and her father would come and massage her legs to help her relax. "Nowadays this sounds highly suspicious," she writes, "but I am sure that he was careful to play the role of the doctor. He had healing hands and in a few minutes I would fall asleep." Here as elsewhere in the Livesay collection, the researcher will find that Dorothy Livesay has written a great deal about her father and his influence on her life and work, and much of what she reveals is contrary to what she would like her reader, and herself, to believe. The Livesay papers as a whole provide a wealth of material on the father-daughter relationship and its connection to a woman's creativity. The "Autobiography" files, along with the correspondence, offer the best examples of this.

Other statements include a description of the author's home on Galiano Island, some comments on love and marriage, and notes on her relatives in England. Among them is a manuscript headed "Prologue to Ch. I," possibly meant for her autobiography (or Darnel), dealing with Livesay's childhood and adolescence in Toronto and relationship with boys. A prefatory remark in this essay summarizes neatly the writer's autobiographical impulse, which is so evident in all her writing. She claims that ". . . the desire to 'make a story' of one's life is one of our most human characteristics. Human beings are not scientists. Memory plays us false; yet memory reveals more than statistics. The truth is a many-sided prism and all one person can do is flash the daylight on some of the walls he knows best." (p. 1)

Of the autobiographical essays a few are concerned with Dorothy Livesay's childhood and youth. Others relate to her experience in New Jersey, her impressions of France, her time in Africa, and two are essays of a general nature on "being in love," and "entertainment." Those essays that deal with Livesay's childhood are to some extent carried over from her short stories (which culminated in A Winnipeg Childhood) and other autobiographical works. Evidently, Dorothy Livesay rewrote the same material many times over the years, as if she had selected only a few recollections that could serve as samples of a larger truth. An instance of such rewriting occurs in the essay "Winnipeg made me," which is the text for a lecture?reading given at the University of Manitoba in January 1970. Here she retells of her coming into consciousness as a child in Winnipeg, using scenes from her story "A Prairie Sampler," Another interesting example of the development of Livesay's work is to be found in an untitled essay or letter dated July 2, 1972 in which the writer describes a winter journey into rural Manitoba, a recollection which became the basis for the poem "Thumbing a Ride." By comparing the essay and the poem, some insight can be gained into Livesay's poetics.

A fragment of an essay on Dorothy Livesay's experiences in New Jersey shows the same persistence with rewriting that is evident in the childhood pieces. Any given fragment on that episode says more or less the same thing, often in the same words, and finds it culmination inRight Hand Left Hand.

The essays on France, however, provide a different view of Livesays' writing. These pieces are more lyrical than the others, more descriptive, and generally more linguistically passionate than most of the author's prose. There is a hint of Dorothy Livesay the journalist in the French articles, with detailed descriptions of the setting and lengthy interviews. The same journalistic trend may be found in three pieces on Africa, including a short story, "Not on My Verandah," which describes, more fully than a regular essay would, what the writer makes of the African experience. Dorothy Livesay can be seen here, as in her New Jersey fragments, empathizing with the natives and others who suffer discrimination. "Not on My Verandah" is one of Livesay's finer stories, where she is able to display her creative talent and journalistic skills to equal advantage.

The two remaining essays in this file, "On Entertainment" and "On Being in Love," are examples of the writer's reflections on her own life and family, and what she culls from those reflections when seeking to understand herself.

Dorothy Livesay's journals occupy a separate box in the autobiographical section of the collection. The journal entries contained therein range from notes she made at the age of fourteen, in 1923, to those penned in the Eighties. Written on loose sheets of paper, there is no overall coherence to the entries. It is likely that the entries here, noted down over a lifetime of writing, are only scattered fragments of the whole of Livesays' journals, with the exception of the very early entries (1923-1928.) The various notes have therefore been grouped by subject rather than date, especially since dates are not always indicated. Entries fall into four general subject categories: Africa; England and France; her parents; and finally reflective jottings of a general nature.

The journal writing Livesay did on her travels abroad is of a specific nature. She speaks mainly of three separate visits to Britain: one while she was studying at the Sorbonne, to attend a Press Conference with her father; another, when she was European correspondent for The Toronto Star, immediately after World War II; and a third when she took training for a job teaching in Africa on behalf of UNESCO. The bulk of the entries concern Livesay's first journey to Europe, where she describes in detail the voyage itself, people on the ship, her impressions of the wide range of social classes she encounters, and her sense of adventure and excitement. Some of the writing is an apparent attempt at fictionalized autobiography, and the Livesay student may discover that the writer used these journal entries as (hopeful) drafts for prose writing. Included in the travel sketches is a make-shift book fragment titled "Touch and Go," a title that reflects both Livesay's uncertainty with life and experience at that time (1950's perhaps), and her convictions about human sexuality. Curiously enough, in the travel entries Dorothy Livesay is doing exactly what her mother, Florence Randal Livesay, did, whose detailed diary about her travels to Africa is also available in the Livesay collection (see "Biography".)

Two prevalent and somewhat contradictory characteristics pertinent to Dorothy Livesay's writing are evident in her travel-sketch journals. In one sense, the reader can see Livesay in the act of finding a form for her autobiography, and for her prose-impetus in general. She tries to dramatize and colour what she observes, often with an odd lack of conviction. In the other, the author functions as a journalist, attempting to remain faithful to the reality she is confronted with, not willing to add or detract for aesthetic purposes. The conflict between Livesay the journalist and Livesay the creative writer continually surfaces and is particularly evident in the few sheets she has concerning Africa. As a teacher and a journalist, as well as a writer concerned with social(ist) activism, Dorothy Livesay tackles all issues and disciplines at once. She cannot entirely dramatize, for she is concerned with the social injustices evident in Africa, particularly the problem of race relations. Nor can she be entirely journalistic, for the dramatist in her, and the autobiographer, nags at her to colour the situation she describes with her own brand of human interest. To the Livesay scholar, there is much to find here when considering the position and problems of the narrator.

The journal entries under the "General" heading cover a wide variety of subjects, although all of them centre the narrative self within a complex of observations and reflections. In these notes, Livesay describes conversations with people, sometimes a dream, and reflects on ideas and historical matters. A small segment of these entries concerns the Thirties, and many provide a useful index to a study of Right Hand Left Hand, as well as the Thirties poems. A few interesting comments may be found scattered among the notes, such as a recorded conversation with her husband Duncan Macnair, about whom there is relatively little material in the collection as a whole. In this segment, Dorothy admits to her husband that being married is "all right for a while," but she imagines she will want something different when she is fifty. Later she considers, after his death, that she has "failed him many times over." The researcher may find that such direct statements are rare in the Livesay papers. The reason for the absence of such unflinching honesty may be found in another entry from this group of papers, which concerns honesty in autobiography. Here she speculates, "who wants to admit the truth about oneself to others? Who even can bear to admit those truths to himself?"

Those entries concerning the influence of Livesay's parents on her writing contain some noteworthy comments, particularly for the student of the writer's memoirs. One entry expresses very lucidly the impetus behind her autobiographical strain, and especially her apparent obsession with her father. Contrary to her assertions elsewhere, in interviews for example, here she speculates that she had no encounters with literary people when she was growing up, and therefore her memoirs cannot be of interest. It should be noted, however, that elsewhere Dorothy Livesay makes much of meeting her parents' friends, such as Mazo de la Roche and Raymond Knister and of the effect these meetings had on her. Her childhood autograph book attests to her having some encounters with famous literary people through her parents, for there she has letters from Edmund Gosse, Frederick P. Grove, Charles G.D. Roberts, and Mazo de la Roche, among others. (See "diaries and calendars".) However, Livesay reflects that only by emphasizing her father's influence on her own career and outlook can an autobiography of hers become universally interesting. Such a work would probe the depths of female creativity and the father complex. "The problem then," she states, "is to make the inner relationships interesting enough."

Finally, the diary fragments from her early youth (1923-1928) to some degree attest to Livesay's emotional sensitivity as a child, and justify her parents' early interest in their daughter's creative abilities. Often Dorothy Livesay complains of being pushed into writing by her parents, but other times she is grateful, It is this relationship which the author can be seen probing, inverting, and analyzing for herself throughout the Livesay collection, and it was obviously of central importance to her. The key to all of Dorothy Livesay's notes, journals, diaries and autobiographical statements may be her entry for September 13, 1970 in which she resolves "not to write many letters to friends or relative, but to make notes each day on the themes I wish to touch in 'the adventures of a writer.'"

One file in the "Journals" category contains descriptions of dreams. Many of the entries are dated (some as early as the 1940's) and contain a description of circumstances in Livesay's life that might have caused her to dream as shown. It is probable that the author wrote down her dreams so she might use them in her writing sometime later. Whether or not Dorothy Livesay actually did base poems or stories on dreams is an open question, one that provides the scholar with a potentially fascinating study. Dreams were recorded as part of the reality she seeks to transform into art, in the same way that her journalism notes provide her with data for her creative work.

The diaries in the collection are distinguished from the journals in that Dorothy Livesay kept diaries intermittently throughout her life, and wrote in them sometimes every day for a stretch of time. The Collection contains relatively few diary books, but enough to determine several points concerning Livesay's life and work. There are diaries from the Twenties, Thirties, Sixties, and Seventies, and then some daily calendars and schedules that show her activities at certain times. The earliest diaries, dated 1929 and 1930, show the young writer in conflict with her own ambitions. "I am suddenly afraid of ambition," she writes on February 23, 1930; "Success does not bring an understanding of life . . . Art no longer matters: I must not let it matter," On March 22, 1929,she writes "I am afraid of exaggeration- -especially in the practical test of storywriting," and on March 9 of that year she comes to the un-Livesayan conclusion that "the question of woman as an artist: it cannot be. This is a fearful truth to accept, but it ought to knock the conceit out of me. . . . Remarks such as these indicate Livesay's reluctance to express herself totally in her work, and show a certain fear of honesty which runs counter to the autobiographical impulse in her writing.

In the diaries, as elsewhere in her papers, the researcher will find an urge on the writer's part to discover the origins of her own inner conflict in the difference between her mother and father. She often hints at a form of repression coming from her parents, and in September 1930, back in Clarkson from France, she writes, "Now I feel alert, very much awakened. Yet already being home closes me up. Already there's a hand against my mouth." That "hand against my mouth" is variously her mother's or her father's in the autobiographical writings, and in the later diaries it becomes the hand of her husband, Duncan Macnair, as well. The Livesay student will find fertile soil in this conflict for an analysis of all aspects of the author's work. The later diaries, 1977 and 1978, provide much insight into Dorothy Livesay's relationship with Duncan Macnair. In the diary she speaks frankly at times of his attitude to her work, their sexual life, and, on October 24, 1977, she recalls "all the scoldings I endured from my father and then from my husband." All of these entries are an index to her sense of repression, and explain to some extent why she spent so much of her life in an effort to be free, both from social convention and from her own emotions.

This material will be of interest to those who wish to corroborate or relate events in Dorothy Livesay's life to her work, and also to any potential biographer. The "Biography" category is distinguished from "Autobiography," for in the latter are papers where Livesay speaks of herself; and is differentiated from "Bibliography," which concerns only the comments and writings of others on the author's work, not her life. The "Biography" segment of the Collection contains a wide variety of papers from all aspects of Livesay's life, a third of which are strictly related to her political and social activities. It will be evident to the researcher from these files just how active the writer has been socially, both in the community and in international organizations. A large portion of these papers relates to Amnesty International, the League of Canadian Poets, and the Canadian Association for Commonwealth Literature and Language Studies. Other associations included are the Association of Canadian University Teachers of English, the Canada Council, the Canada-USSR Association, and the Canadian Authors Association. An interesting segment of this category for the biographical scholar are those papers that deal with Livesay's working career, which includes the jobs she has held other than academic posts, such as teaching and social work. Also of interest are miscellaneous family documents, such as report cards and certificates.

There are valuable materials on Florence Randal Livesay, John Frederick Bligh Livesay, and Duncan Cameron Macnair. Of her mother, Florence Randal Livesay, there are translations and clippings, as well as correspondence and genealogical charts. A thesis by Louisa Loeb on Florence Randal Livesay's translations can be found here. Included are some of her father's articles and clippings, a few diary notes and correspondence. The files also contain a very few of Duncan Macnair's poems, reviews and articles. In this same series are Dorothy Livesay's theses written for the Sorbonne and the University of British Columbia. Since both of these theses are about poetry, they have a great deal of bearing on the writer's work.

The "Bibliography" category contains published reviews of Dorothy Livesay's books and edited works; articles about her work, some academic, as well as commentaries and copies of the poet's bibliography as it appears in various directories; clippings on Livesay from magazines and newspapers, covering the years 1927 to 1985; papers regarding the film "The Woman I Am"; bibliographic lists of various kinds; and student essays on the writer's work. All of this material, excepting the student essays, is in the public domain and may be found in almost any university library, These files are therefore not unique to the University of Manitoba Archives and will not be covered in detail here. It is also probable that these files are incomplete, that is, there are more reviews, clippings and articles in existence than have come to the Department. A further problem is that many of the articles, as well as some of the reviews and clippings, are undated or in some way are lacking full bibliographic information. Without this data, the secondary sources concerning the Livesayana are of less than adequate use.

What the "Bibliography" files here do have to offer however, is a good percentage of clippings and reviews which the researcher may find hard to locate elsewhere, since these types of sources are inadequately indexed in the current Canadian press. A clipping will not appear in an index, for example, if the publication it is drawn from is too obscure. The Livesay student will be able to gain an overview of contemporary attitudes to Dorothy Livesay's work, and see the changes that have occurred in the public understanding of her poetry and prose over the years. Some gleanings into Canadian reviewing practices may be discerned as well, for newspaper and journal items began to appear concerning Dorothy Livesay with the publication of her first book, Green Pitcher, in 1928. Since then, there are clippings and reviews to be found from every year, and these are all arranged chronologically. Most of the articles and reviews are sympathetic and favourable, but few probe far beneath the surface of her work in their analysis. Of note are the following: a review article on Collected Poems: The Two Seasons by Patrick Lane (Blackfish Nos. 4-5, Winter/Spring 1972-73); "Livesay's Two Seasons of Love" by Debbie Foulks (Canadian Literature, date unspecified); "Out of the Silence and Across the Distance: The Poetry of Dorothy Livesay," by Peter Stevens (a paper given at an unidentified event); "Dorothy Livesay: Poet of Nature," by Doris Leland (The Dalhousie Review, date unspecified); "Dorothy Livesay and the Transcendentalist Tradition," by Jean Gibbs (The Humanities Association Bulletin, Vol. 21, No. 2, Spring 1970); the early "Canadian Writer of Today," by W.E. Collin (The Canadian Forum, January 1932); and' "How Silence Sings' in the Poetry of Dorothy Livesay 1926-1973," by Beverly Mitchell (The Dalhousie Review., date unspecified).

As to the clippings contained in these files, the Livesay student will find a far more varied reception to the poet in the mass media than in the literary journals, where the articles and reviews mostly have appeared. It seems that journalists covering a book or a reading for the press are less informed and more inclined to express themselves in clicheed terms than are the writers for the journals. Invariably a newspaper story will qualify Dorothy Livesay the writer as either someone's daughter, someone's wife, a housewife, and later as someone's mother and grandmother. Seldom is the writer spoken of as a writer only. An interesting study in Canadian literary journalism may therefore be made from these files, and the Livesay student could then attempt to ascertain what influence these clippings may have had on the poet's self-image, and on her work as a result, The "Autobiography" files will show, in fact, that Dorothy Livesay has always faced some form of conflict between her insecure self?image and her strongly held convictions, Her press and journal coverage goes a long way in explaining this conflict.

Among the so-called business papers of Livesay's personal life and writings are such important items as her last will and testament, Canada Council Grants and other contests and awards, inventories and catalogues of her papers and poems elsewhere, newsclippings which she kept, two boxes of her financial papers, and three boxes of files relating to her being writer-in-residence in six different Canadian universities. Of special interest are the several folders of materials which document her founding role, and continuing involvement in the literary journal Contemporary Verse Two (CV/II). These include subscription lists, manuscript material, copies, and several operating files.

Among the so-called business papers of Livesay's personal life and writings are such important items as her last will and testament, Canada Council Grants and other contests and awards, inventories and catalogues of her papers and poems elsewhere, newsclippings which she kept, two boxes of her financial papers, and three boxes of files relating to her being writer-in-residence in six different Canadian universities. Of special interest are the several folders of materials which document her founding role, and continuing involvement in the literary journal Contemporary Verse Two (CV/II). These include subscription lists, manuscript material, copies, and several operating files.

The correspondence is a very large and very rich component of the Dorothy Livesay Collection. Divided into two major sections- -the Family Correspondence and the Professional Correspondence- -it occupies forty-two archival (5") boxes.

The Family Correspondence is filed by individual correspondent, that is, the letters of Dorothy Livesay to her father will be in folders separate from the letters her father wrote to her. In the Professional Correspondence section, no such division exists. The entire exchange of letters between Livesay and the other party are put together in the same folder. Since letters are filed alphabetically under the surname of the other correspondent, no letter in the Professional Correspondence is filed under Dorothy Livesay's name. Nevertheless, many of her letters are here, most often as duplicates of the original.

Indeed, Livesay has managed over the years to preserve copies of a great many of the letters she sent and received. The Family Correspondence contains a number of the letters she wrote to her father when she was a very young child, as well as much of her parents' correspondence, the correspondence of her husband, Duncan Macnair, great sheaves of letters from both her sister, Sophie, and her daughter, Marcia, and even letters from an assortment of fairly distant relatives. The Professional Correspondence is similarly complete, ranging from a single letter from a onetime correspondent to several file folders of letters covering a correspondence which spans decades. The letters range from strictly business relations through heated exchanges over poetry and poetics to intimate friendships, with many variations in between. Some of the more notable of Livesay's correspondents are Milton Acorn, Alan Crawley, Earle Birney, Patrick Lane, Lon Lawson and others who were involved with the magazine New Frontier in the Thirties, Millie Lamb, Oscar Ryan, Fred Cogswell, and Miriam Waddington. She has been in communication with people in South America, Denmark, England, France, Bulgaria, Russia, and Africa. Livesay has always been an avid correspondent, and it is in her letters that one sees her in all her many roles- -poet, friend, confidante, mother, wife, lover, anthologist, academic, applicant and referee for grant proposals, thesis supervisor, concerned citizen and writer of letters to the editor and more.

Across these many roles, however, one can hear in her letters both a consistency of tone and distinct changes of voice. The letters Livesay wrote as a child are charming. Most of them are addressed to her father, John Frederick Bligh Livesay ("JFBL"), who was sometimes separated from his family by trips related to newspaper business, and are imbued with a desire to please him. In return, JFBL made up rhymes and stories and drew amusing pictures in his letters to his daughters. One letter, dated March 18, 1916, is written as if it were from Sophie's imaginary playmate Main.

The voice in Livesay's letters shifts into a slightly different register in late adolescence. The desire to please her father is still strong, and a note of barely contained excitement becomes predominant. A self-consciously literary style and a tone of shared complicity between father and daughter also appear at this time, about 1928-29. For example, the letter marked July 24, 1928 (and signed "Your Fallen Daughter") is a confession of sexual initiation:

Listen: should I have a pseudonym [re: publication of two stories, "The Quarrel" and "Heat"]? You know so many people will be horrified. Oh Lord, I am Jekyll and Hyde all over again. But you have succeeded in keeping one foremost (I forget which one).

By the time she reaches young adulthood and has transplanted herself to Europe, Livesay's desire to please her father, coupled with his transference onto her of his unfulfilled dreams of being a writer, has blossomed into a playful seduction in which both father and daughter engage. This "seduction" is characterized in their letters by a teasing, flirtatious tone, frank sexual discussions and confessions, the use of affectionate names and diminutives, as well as a tone of unspecified longing. Livesay's letters contain subtle suggestions that she prefers her father over any number of men her own age, while he writes scathing denunciations of his wife. The daughter co-operates in this devaluation of her mother. She and her mother never got along well, and, at this particular stage in her life, as the potential "traps" of marriage and childrearing loom closer, she attempts to dissociate herself from her mother even further.

The crisis in the father-daughter relationship comes during a trip to England. Dorothy accompanies JFBL, in place of his wife, on an extended press tour of the country. A great deal of anticipation and excitement is evident in the letters leading up to the trip, and Dorothy is very conscious of taking her mother's place:

But thank you so much for letting me come. Mother indeed would have been hopeless, being entirely without a sense of proportion. Her simplicity is refreshing in the home but impossible in society. However: a "social" wife would not have understood you [DL to JFBL, February 9, 1929 or 1930].

While on the tour, they have a disagreement- -he wants her to come with him on a trip to his birthplace on the Isle of Wight on the same day that she wishes to attend a lecture by George Bernard Shaw. An argument ensues and Dorothy stalks out of the hotel where they are staying and remains away all day long. Her father overreacts to her absence, imagining her injured or killed or having taken her own life. He even goes so far as to write a long letter to his wife assuming all responsibility for his daughter's "suicide." Following this incident, when Dorothy returns unharmed, the intensity between the two of them diminishes somewhat. JFBL begins very gradually to turn more toward his wife, largely because she cares for him in his illness and infirmities. It is only during his last couple of years that a grudging respect for her begins to reappear in his letters to his daughter.

During his daughter's early working and poetic careers, and during the early years of her marriage, JFBL remains involved in her life, although his influence is primarily related to financial matters. The budget of the Macnair household is frequently strained, and JFBL is always willing and able to provide funds for emergencies and for house purchases.

In addition to his financial backing during this period (roughly 1930-1944), JFBL uses his professional influence to promote his daughter's writing career. When each of her first two books --Green Pitcher and Signpost--is published, he writes letters to all his newspaper contacts requesting that his daughter's book be reviewed. He carefully mentions to each editor that of course he expects the book to stand on its own merits and that a "slate" is as good as a "boost," but as General Manager of the Canadian Press his clout with the newspaper editors across Canada was considerable.

The correspondence between Livesay and her father comes to an end with JFBL's death in 1944, but her relationship with him has had an enormous impact upon her throughout her life. His consistent encouragement of and pride in her talents , his example as a journalist, his talents as a literary critic, his financial backing --all of these factors molded her early career. Her fascination with this primary relationship, and with the relationship between her father and her mother, has helped to fuel her lifelong interest in memoirs, autobiography, and documentary.

Livesay's mother, Florence Randal Livesay ("FRL"), provided support and encouragement as well. One difference, perhaps a crucial one, between her father and mother was that her father was a failed writer, whereas her mother enjoyed considerable success and reputation. The father's failure--his confessed inability to tell the whole truth about his life --caused him to deflect his writerly ambitions onto the daughter most likely to succeed where he had not. His failure created a lack, an absence, a space, into which the young woman could insert herself.

FRL was equally supportive of her daughter's literary endeavours. When Livesay is a pre-school child, her mother has a column in the newspaper in which she prints the amusing things little Dorothy says and does and the stories she makes up. It is the mother who secretly sends out her daughter's first poems for publication. Livesay has claimed in interviews that when the first poem appeared in print, she was furious with her mother for snooping into her dresser drawers where she kept her private papers. Her mother continues to act as her "agent" at least until Dorothy has published her first two books. While her daughter is studying in Europe, for example, FRL oversees the production of Signpost. Letters go back and forth discussing the title and arrangement of the book, as well as the publication of some of the poems in various literary magazines in Canada and the United States. FRL sends DL's poems and stories out, keeps track of submissions and payment, and maintains correspondence with publishers. In 1949 on a trip to London, England, FRL tries to negotiate with the British Broadcasting Corporation for a reading of her daughter's poetry, with FRL to do the actual reading. She also drops in at Faber's to promote her daughter's work.

Unlike the father's campaigns, however, many of FRL's promotional efforts on her daughter's behalf produce discord and rancor between parent and daughter. FRL writes:

Of course I am always interested in all your literary projects --but don't take up valuable time and space in telling me how "mad" you are bout something I did for you! [FRL to DL, February 17, 1930]

About criticism --I haven't time to write detailed stuff and you might know I like things if I speak of minor defects [FRL to DL, January 17, 1930].

For her part, Livesay is sharp, abrupt, and impatient with her mother. Hostility usually lurks below the surface. In an undated letter responding to her mother's criticisms of one of her books (probably Day and Night) DL writes:

I don't mind your reactions to the book. The last ten years have been "somber" and "grey" to anyone living in the times, and as you have never experienced them, you naturally do not respond to a record of them.

No doubt JFBL's consuming interest in his daughters, especially Dorothy, must have embittered FRL and caused some disagreeable tensions. Dorothy's sister Sophie, in her letters, also describes their mother as difficult, although it seems she is somewhat closer to her than Dorothy ever was.

Sophie's letters to her parents are much more even in tone. She is emotionally more distant from them. That is to say, for her they are parents, not titans to be wrestled with. Her letters indicate feelings of personal and intellectual inferiority to her older sister. For example, she remarks that Dorothy's first child is probably brighter and better trained than her own child, Gillian, and she writes of her second child, Brenda: "I think she'll be like her Ma, late to develop, but not necessarily stupid . . . But their Mama I fear does not give them the cultural stimulus which the young McNairs [sic] no doubt get" [Sophie to DL, May Day 1946]. Also: "Anyway it doesn't look as if she [Brenda] is going to be the insignificant littler sister that I was. If she hasn't the brains, she's the guts" [Sophie to DL, December 30, 1944].

The letters between Dorothy and Sophie are fairly straightforward discussions of child-rearing, domestic, financial and medical problems, and political events. Dorothy is the more introspective of the two sisters, periodically probing Sophie's memory, as well as her own, for information about their parents' lives. Occasionally the sisters lash out at one another, sometimes over Sophie's vagueness as to travel plans and Dorothy's tendency to intervene and take over such plans. Dorothy accuses Sophie of being too much like their mother. Sophie accuses Dorothy of being overbearing. Both admit to being difficult. However, neither seems to hold a grudge once she has stated her position and got the matter off her chest by writing it down. There are thirty-eight folders of letters between the sisters, ranging from 1926 to 1982.

The letters between Dorothy Livesay and her husband, Duncan Macnair, begin with their courtship in 1936 and end with his death in 1959. There are ten folders of their correspondence. The earliest dated letter from Dorothy, addressed "Ho there, outrider," is about the conflict between writing and political activity due to physical, financial and time constraints and to the extremely small size of the reading public in Canada: "in this country people do not read --their rawness is closer to action than thought or poetry" [DL to Duncan Macnair, letter dated Sunday evening 1936]. In many of these letters from their courtship days, the rhetoric of politics blends with the rhetoric of love and relationship. Dorothy's letters are addressed to "My comrade lover" and "My Heart's Forward Marcher."

At times these two rhetorics co-exist harmoniously; at other times there is a strain. For example, in one letter Livesay discusses the conflict between her communist view of marriage and her traditional romantic views.

As a communist, marriage is just a legal and social manifestation of an already existing arrangement But I am quite incapable, so far, of seeing it in only that light . . . . The forms and the ceremonies I abhor; but the relationship and the assumptions seem to me almost holy (in a human sense) [letter headed Saturday afternoon, Second Beach].

But the conflict between writing and not writing is the issue upon which these conflicts between writing and politics, communism and capitalist conservatism, and many of the other dichotomies in Livesay's life are based:

I am quite sure I am finished with writing poetry, and unless I get hold of a prose project I won't even do that. But first I have to be alone more than has been possible, and second, I have to have music somehow, someway [DL to Duncan Macnair, letter headed Woodlot, Wednesday, January 8].

She writes this letter to her husband in Vancouver from the sanctuary of her father's house in Ontario.

This dilemma of the creative writer --the struggle to gain sufficient time and financial freedom to devote herself to her writing --pervades much of the Dorothy Livesay correspondence. Naturally, since the letters to her husband deal with immediate familial and domestic matters, this theme appears over and over again in these letters, whether they are written before their marriage or after. Livesay's concern remains the same when she is weighing the demands and responsibilities of a husband and family versus her career as a social worker, and both of these against the demands of her writing; when she travels to Europe after World War 11 as a correspondent for the Toronto Star; and when she is working for UNESCO in Paris.

Duncan's letters to Dorothy are similarly addressed to "My Beloved Comrade" and "My Dear Field Marshal," as well as "My Beloved Geranium" and "My Beloved Fish Lake Platypus." His earliest letters describe his job in a mountain mining camp near Hedley, B.C., and discuss politics and the magazine New Frontier. His letters after their marriage usually record where he goes during the day, what people he sees, where he has dinner. He often mentions their cat. There is less content in these letters about his ideas and feelings, as his wife often remarks. He always complains about being tired but nonetheless seems to maintain a fairly demanding schedule of meetings and political activities.

There is a hearty tone in the early letters of both Dorothy and Duncan of setting out as comrades together to change the world. The conviction is often repeated that, as a pair, they can do much in the world. The tone changes considerably after five or six years of marriage. Duncan adopts the stance of the beleaguered man, put-upon by women: "You sure talk a hell of a lot of nonsense compared with what you did 5 years ago --however the coming of a family accounts for that" [Duncan to DL, 25 February 1942]. Similarly in Dorothy's letters to her husband there is a decline in the amount of political content as accounts of their toddler son's antics occupy more and more lines, and as she feels increasingly alienated from her writing by demands of family life.

The Family Correspondence also contains a large number of letters between Dorothy and her daughter, Marcia, and a much smaller number between her and her son, Peter. The children's correspondence with their father occupies four separate folders, and their correspondence with one another one folder. There are twenty-one slim folders of letters between Dorothy and relatives outside her immediate family, as well as some correspondence between her parents and their friends and relatives. There are also the letters between Dorothy and Anne Campbell. Campbell is a very close friend and confidante and even, during periods when Dorothy is away from her family in Europe, surrogate mother to Dorothy's children. The correspondence between "Annie" and "Dee" is much more personal and familial than professional and for this reason is included with the Family Correspondence.

The Professional Correspondence is an impressive collection of some thirty-three boxes of letters with writers, publishers, artists, editors, educators, students, admirers, and scores of other people individually listed in the Container List. Since Livesay's writing career spans the better part of six decades, one might hope for significant correspondence with other prominent Canadian writers at various stages of their careers --an expectation amply borne out by the thousands of letters in this category.

Included here are twenty-nine letters between her and Margaret Atwood (1971-73), a dozen with Bill Bissett (1973-82), sixty with Fred Cogswell (1953-80), over one hundred with Alan Crawley and family (1939-82), thirteen with Patrick Lane (1967-81), seventy-eight with Elizabeth Varley (1939-80), nineteen with Pat Lowther (1970-75), ten with John Newlove (1971-80), eighty-six with George Woodcock (1970-82), and correspondence with approximately 1,800 others.

In total, the Correspondence forms a very large and significant part of the Dorothy Livesay Collection, offering a comprehensive view of Livesay's life and work from childhood into old age. Researchers will be able to investigate such diverse topics as Livesay's activities as an editor of various books and magazines, the editorial process for her Collected Poems, her fan mail, her fascination with such subjects as the Japanese-Canadians, Louis Riel, and Isabella Valancy Crawford, and literary influences, alliances and feuds. It will be possible to make biographical connections between the work and the life through an examination of the Correspondence. Any number of topics primarily related to the work will be further illuminated by a reading of the Correspondence. The Livesay Correspondence is a major addition to the body of Canadian archival materials.

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