his diaries that he printed in his major collections, two groups of William Michael’scorrespondence, about Shelley and Whitman, have been previously published, and chapters on him appear in Waller’s The Rossetti Family and Weintraub’s Four Rossettis. But he has not as yet been the subject ofa fullscale life or critical study. William Michael Rossetti is patently deserving of a good biographer: with this edition of the letters behind him, with the vast archive he has accumulated over nearly thirty years, with his encylopaedic knowledge of the man, and with his discriminating and accurate assessment of William Michael Rossetti’s achievement, Professor Peattie is eminently qualified to undertake the task. The Pre-Raphaelites have not always been lucky in the scholars and writers that have been attracted to them. Professor Peattie ranks close to the best. w il l ia m E. f r e d e m a n / University of British Columbia Theses on English-Canadian Literature: A Bibliography of Research Pro duced in Canada and Elsewherefrom 1903 Forward, compiled by Appolonia Steele (with assistance from Joanne K. Henning) (Calgary: University of Calgary Press, 1989). xxvi, 505. $34.95 paper. In a recent back-page report in an English newspaper, it was suggested, with some amusement, that students in the field of English literature had almost exhausted profitable areas of thesis research. Such a conclusion was reached by virtue of the fact that a doctoral candidate was being allowed to submit a thesis on graffiti found on the walls of female water closets (known to us as toilets). As specious as that conclusion might be, it supports a growing contention that students are finding it increasingly difficult to find an ‘unworked’topicforboth M.A. and Ph.D. theses. And thefield ofEnglishCanadian literature is no exception — a fact attested to by Ms. Steele’s weighty bibliography. Everything from the CODCO players to the Family Herald have been appropriated as suitable subjects to test the intellectual prowess of some two thousand students since 1903 and no doubt try the patience of as many supervisors. There are forty-five theses on Margaret Atwood alone (making it now possible to write a thesis on those theses), almost twice as many on Margaret Laurence, and at least one on Aritha Van Herk who was herself a student not very many years ago. It won’t be long, it seems, before Canadian students too will be searching the walls of toilets for possible thesis material. That rather unhappy impression was the first that forced itself on my beleaguered mind as I thumbed through the five hundred pages of thesis titles presented in this book. I was no doubt predisposed to this impression 367 because the bibliography seems to support what students have been saying for a number of years: “there doesn’t seem to be much left to write about, does there?” On reflection, however, I realized that there were other, more diverting, purposes that could have suggested themselves. That is, if one has the time and perhaps a good sense of humour. There is, for example, an index of theses by university, allowing us to see which are (as one of my colleagues puts it) “pouring out the most.” One can even go further and see just which university’s graduates have been most successful in the academic world. There is an index of theses by date, offering a kind of condensed history of Canadian studies — the pioneers ofour profession — in the theses of Ray Palmer Baker (1916), R.K. Gordon (1920), V.L.O. Chittick (1924), Carl Klinck (1930), and so forth. This, and the complete author index, allows one to see whose theses have (like that of Chittick) been turned into books. One can also do a count of thesis writers to determine just how many are now prominent in Canadian studies. Or, perversely, one can see just how many noted teachers of Canadian literature never wrote a thesis on the subject. So many things, so little reason. If all this sounds somewhat facetious, I can only reply that it is very diffi cult to propose an important purpose (or use) for this kind of bibliography — other than as...