Literary world
Raymond Knister was one of the first professional writers in Canada. As such, he was both widely-published and well regarded in the literary world. The two pages in this section showcase this, with an article from The Globe, in 1931, about Knister and his writing, and an analytical essay about Knister’s work in This Quarter.
![There are four photos of a younger Myrtle Grace, and two photos of Raymond Knister, and a newspaper clipping reading "KNISTER-To Mr. Knister Port Dover, a daughter," all pasted on to a white paper. Two portraits of Myrtle are on the left and say "before" between them. The other two are on the left, one of her smiling at the camera and another portrait. The sentence "Just after I was m[arried]" is covered by the second. The two photos of Knister are in the middle, a narrow strip of him in a black suit and a portrait of him looking away from the camera.](https://collections.uwindsor.ca/omeka-s/files/large/303eb4b74eb4a91fa056926f648e73d294da5f99.jpg)
Collage of Myrtle and Raymond Knister, ca. 1927;1930.
“The prose he longed to write never reached its full flowering; but there is enough of it, in the short stories, to guide and stimulate serious writers of the future. This prose, poetic and interpretive of our countryside and our people, succeeds because of its utter simplicity and honesty. Stripped of all pretension and wordiness, beneath the bare style there is revealed an undercurrent of passion, of emotion, which gives it lasting significance for us.”
From "Raymond Knister. A Memoir" by Dorothy Livesay, in The Collected Poems of Raymond Knister. (Toronto: The Ryerson Press, 1949, page xl)
"The rich brown earth of southwestern Ontario adheres to every line of Raymond Knister's White Narcissus."
From "'Paperback Writer: Knister's love for land inspiring,” by Ted Shaw in The Windsor Star, Windsor, Ont. May 19 1990, [Final Edition] pg. E.5