The House of All Sorts - Softcover

Carr, Emily

3.95

261 ratings by Goodreads

Softcover

ISBN 10: 1553650549 ISBN 13: 9781553650546

Publisher: Douglas & McIntyre, 2004

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Emily Carr was primarily a painter, but she first gained recognition as an author for her seven books about her journeys to remote Native communities and stories about life as an artist, as a small child in Victoria at the turn of the last century and as a reluctant landlady.

Before winning recognition for her painting and writing, Carr built a small apartment building with four suites (she lived in one of them) that she hoped would earn her a living. But things turned out worse than expected, and in her forties, the gifted artist found herself shoveling coal and cleaning up after people for 23 years.

The House of All Sorts is a collection of 41 stories of those hard-working days and the parade of tenants- young couples, widows, sad bachelors and rent evaders all the tears and travails of being a landlady confronted with the startling foibles of humanity. Carr is at her most acerbic and rueful, but filled with energy and inextinguishable hope.

Carr’s writing is vital and direct, aware and poignant, and as well regarded today as when The House of All Sorts was first published in 1944 to critical and popular acclaim. The book has been in print ever since.

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About the Author:

Young, spirited and rebellious, Emily Carr escaped a strict Victorian household to study art in the Paris of Picasso and Matisse. In middle age, she shook the dust of acceptable society from her shoes and began a passionate journey into the wilderness of British Columbia; the power of her genius made her one of the twentieth century's great painters. Fortunately, she also wrote. In her books, her warmth, her humanity, her sense of fun and the ridiculous combine to present a self-portrait of a remarkable woman and artist. -- Mary Pratt

Susan Musgrave is a critically acclaimed, award-winning poet, novelist, columnist, reviewer, editor and non-fiction writer. She has been nominated, and has received awards, for her poetry, fiction, non-fiction, personal essays and children's writing, as well as for her work as an editor.

Review:

"Carr is a magical wordsmith whose gorgeous prose reflects a desire for simplicity even as it sensually mirrors life in its teeming complexity." (Publisher's Weekly)

"I predict that Emily Carr will be generally recognixed as one of the foremost among the few important writers that Canada has produced." (Robertson Davies)

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