This book was astonishingly good. Although this book has apparently never been out of print, it doesn't really get talked about either. I think that's partly prejudice against it's autobiographical nature, and also people seeing Carr's writing as just a sideshow to her painting - painting which i...
I bought this first edition hard cover in Toronto, I believe. I kind of shudder to myself to think that YES, I marked it up. Fortunately, I am not a book collector in that sense of the word. Here is my review, again, written awhile ago, after I had just experienced the raw Emily...This was her "p...
Before winning recognition as an artist and writer, Emily Carr served as landlady to an apartment building where she bred English sheep dogs to supplement a meager income. A collection of stories about those hard-working days, The House of All Sorts features vividly portrayed tenants who frequent...
It was a deep warehouse with a deep smell. There was a black shield at the front with gold lettering that read: Wholesale Importers and Commission Merchants. Father’s little office was near the front door; he had a wicker armchair and sat at a table desk covered with green baize. There was a cupb...
I went first to the Office, enquiring how I was to act. Mr. Ford took me up the broad stairway leading to the balcony off which our class rooms opened. There were two “life” rooms for women. Mr. Ford introduced me to the head student, a woman dour and middle-aged. “Ever worked from life?” she sna...
They turned their noses up at our public schools as if they had been bad smells, preferring to send their children to old, ultra-genteel-hard-up English Ladies’ Academies. Of these there were quite a few in Victoria; in them learning was confined to good manners. Politeness-education ladies had m...
In these pages, she records her conversations with herself, her thoughts about her art and her search for a meaning in life. We witness her frequent anger and guilt towards family, neighbours and colleagues, her emotional life of alternate elation and depression, and her frustration at the strugg...