Margaret Laurence

Margaret Laurence, best known for her five Manawaka novels, also published five African texts, as well as collections of essays, short stories, children's books and literary criticism.

Gabrielle Roy

By the 1970s, Gabrielle Roy (1909–1983) and Margaret Laurence (1926–1987) had become two of the great icons of Canadian literature. In 1974, Roy returned to the center of the literary stage with a series of books that many critics now consider her richest and most mature works.

Paul Socken

Paul Socken teaches French at the University of Waterloo, Canada. He is the editor of Gabrielle Roy Aujourd’hui/Today.

Intimate Strangers
The Letters of Margaret Laurence and Gabrielle Roy

Margaret Laurence

Gabrielle Roy

 Edited by

Paul Socken

By the 1970s, Margaret Laurence (1926–1987) and Gabrielle Roy (1909– 1983) had become two of the great icons of Canadian literature. In 1974, Laurence published her final novel, The Diviners, to great critical and popular acclaim. She would devote the rest of her life to social activism and smaller writing projects. In the same decade, Roy returned to the center of the literary stage with a series of books that many critics now consider her richest and most mature works.

 
Although both had been born and raised in western Canada, Laurence and Roy did not come into contact 
with each other until late in life. In 1976, Laurence and Roy began this seven-year correspondence, when both were at the height of their powers as writers. These lovely letters record the moving friendship between these two great Canadian writers, in which they talk about writing, about Canadian politics, and their shared roots in the Canadian prairies.

Reviews

"...for admirers of Canadian writers in general and the work of Laurence and Roy in particular, this correspondence is invaluable." – Canadian Literature, Autumn 2006

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