Anti-modernist Paradox in Canada: The Graphic Publishers (1925-32) and the Case of Madge Macbeth

Abstract

Anti-modernism is a term that historians and literary critics have employed in different ways: to refer to the rejection of an “overcivilized” modernity and to describe the popular literary forms that are understood to be the antithesis of literary modernism. The author argues that both understandings of the term offer helpful frameworks for a materialist reading of Graphic Publishers—an Ottawa-based company devoted exclusively to the publication of Canadian books—and their most frequently published author, Madge Macbeth (1880-1965). The anti-modernist paradox that characterizes the material culture of Graphic Publishers emerges not just from the nationalist sentiment of the interwar period, but also from the company’s distance from Toronto, the traditional geographical centre of Canadian publishing; Macbeth’s similarly compromised position as an author is likewise a crucial factor in her employment of the paradoxical formulations of anti-modernism.