Thirty Acres (New Canadian Library)

One of the most important books to come out of Quebec, Thirty Acres traces the course of one man’s life as he enters into the age-old rhythms of the land and of the seasons. At the same time, it is a novel on a grand social scale, spanning and documenting the tumultuous half-century in which a new, industrial urban society crowded out Quebec’s traditional rural one.

Winner of the Governor General’s Award and numerous other national and international literary prizes, Thirty Acres is a universal story of birth and death, renewal and reversal, ascent and decline, and a masterpiece of irony and realism.

Ringuet, the pseudonym of Philippe Panneton, was born in Trois-Rivières, Quebec, in 1895. Educated at Laval University and later at the University of Montreal, he graduated from the latter's medical school in 1920. After three years of postgraduate study in Paris, he returned to Montreal, where he set up his medical practice and later rejoined the medical faculty of the University of Montreal.

Ringuet’s distinguished career in medicine complemented his deep commitment to literature. His first book, Writing…in the Style of…, was a series of literary parodies of famous writers. His first novel, Thirty Acres, a panoramic portrait of Quebec’s traditional agrarian society in the process of change, won immediate critical acclaim and was translated into Dutch, English, German, and Spanish.

Ringuet’s later fiction often explores the discontent that confronts his character in their urban settings.

In 1944 Ringuet was a founding member of L’Académie canadienne-française and served as its president from 1947 until 1953. He was appointed Canadian ambassador to Portugal in 1956.

Ringuet died in Lisbon in 1960.