William Arthur Deacon

William Arthur Deacon was an intellectual patron and prophet in Canadian writing. For forty years, as literary editor of Saturday Night (1922-8), The Mail and Empire (1928-36), and The Globe and Mail (1936-60) he contributed vast amounts of time and energy to building a readership and a sympathetic climate for Canadian writers and writing. His correspondence put him in touch, as no other reviewer before him, with virtually every English- and French-Canadian author of his time. Based on his correspondence, books, and review columns, the biography views Deacons life in terms of this involvement and in the context of the cultural and political forces of his time. Deacons early years as a lawyer, his self-imposed literary apprenticeship, and his break with the law as a profession concurred with the sense of mission and destiny that were part of his Methodist family background and his personal theosophical beliefs. Coming to Toronto in 1922, he quickly established himself as the countrys premier literary reviewer and poured his energies into that role. In that decade he also published Pens and Pirates, Poteen, The Four Jameses, and the appreciative monograph Peter McArthur. Deacons dismissal from Saturday Night and the Depression years tempered his zeal and broadened his awareness beyond literary horizons, although they were still the focus of his energies. His nationalism and pacifism were articulated in My Vision of Canada (1933). He also found himself more aware of the importance of literary community as he became deeply involved in the survival of Canadian writers and publishers. Deacons years with the Canadian Authors Association, first as member, then as Toronto branch president, and finally as national president, witnessed the establishment of the Canadian Writers Foundation, the Governor-Generals Awards, the Standard Writers Contract, and the recognition by the federal government of special tax arrangements for Canadian writers. The list of those who enjoyed Deacons friendship and support reads like a whos who of Canadian literature, and his associations with French-Canadian writers after the Second World War broadened the cultural awareness of his readers. His service to both reader and writer and to the culture on which both depend was without parallel as this volume vividly reveals.