Canadian Literature is a quarterly peer-reviewed journal of criticism and review, founded in 1959 and owned by the University of British Columbia. The journal publishes articles of criticism and reviews about Canadian literature in English and French by Canadian and international scholars. It also publishes around 24 original poems a year and occasional interviews with writers. Each issue contains an extensive book reviews section. Rather than focusing on a single theoretical approach, Canadian Literature contains articles on all subjects relating to writers and writing in Canada. Each issue contains content from a range of contributors, and the journal has been described as "critically eclectic".
Publication
Canadian Literature publishes both general and special issues. The general issues deal with a range of periods and topics, while the special issues focus on more specific topics, including issues on themes such as travel, ethnicity, women's writing, multiculturalism, and Indigenous literature; particular genres such as Canadian poetry, historical novels; life writing, and speculative fiction; or the work of prominent authors of Canadian literature such as Thomas King, P.K. Page, or Leonard Cohen.
The journal's average length is 208 pages. Canadian Literature reaches a global readership and is distributed in print in Canada, US, and twenty-five other countries. Institutions make up the majority of its print subscription base, which is largely made up of university and college libraries. In 2007, Canadian Literatures subscriber base was 45% Canadian, 36% American and 19% international. The journal's back catalogue of issues is openly accessible through its website, which also houses original resources such as the CanLit Guides educational project, the CanLit Poets database, interviews, opinions, and other content. In 2013-14, the journal's website had 452,237 visitors and its articles were downloaded 193,506 times.
History
Founding and Early History
Canadian Literature was established in the autumn of 1958 by Roy Daniells and George Woodcock at the University of British Columbia. The first issue appeared in summer 1959 to skeptical reception because of a general belief that Canada had no national literature; some critics predicted that the journal would run out of material after only a few issues. Initially, editor George Woodcock intended that Canadian Literature would be fully bilingual in French and English, but due to the lack of French submissions, after ten years of publication French-language material never rose above 10% of an issue's content. At the time of its foundation, Canadian Literature was the first and only quarterly entirely devoted to the discussion and criticism of Canadian writing and literature.
Although the position of editor eventually went to George Woodcock, the university's first choice was a bibliographer, UBC's only specialist in Canadian literature, Reginald Watters; the position was offered to Woodcock after Watters decided to accept a fellowship in Australia. As editor, Woodcock strove to keep the journal from being purely academic, instead adopting a tone "serious but not academic, popular but not journalistic, contextual more than textual" (Fetherling). As the first journal dedicated to the study of Canadian writers and writing, Canadian Literature supported the "newly institutionalized field of Canadian literature" during a period of increasing cultural nationalism in Canada. Woodcock later attributed Canadian Literatures success to having arrived "at the right moment in the development of a Canadian literary tradition, and created its own ground swell of critical activity."