Tamarack Review

Tamarack Review was a Canadian literary magazine founded in 1956 that published poetry, fiction, criticism, and essays, helping to shape mid‑20th‑century Canadian letters. It became a venue where emerging and established figures from the Canadian and international literary scenes—including novelists, poets, critics, and translators—appeared alongside debates about national identity, modernism, and cultural policy. The magazine's pages featured prominent contributors and engaged with institutions and awards that marked literary careers.

History

The magazine was established in Toronto in 1956 amid the postwar surge of periodicals such as Preview (Canadian magazine), Canadian Forum, Queen's Quarterly, University of Toronto Quarterly, and Grain (magazine). Founders aimed to provide an independent outlet distinct from university and government publications like Maclean's and Saturday Night (magazine). Early issues situated the Review within conversations that involved figures associated with the Vancouver School of Poetry, the Massey Commission, and cultural debates sparked by the Royal Commission on National Development in the Arts, Letters and Sciences. Through the 1960s and 1970s the magazine operated alongside contemporaries such as The Fiddlehead, ARC Poetry Magazine, The Malahat Review, The Canadian Forum, and The Dalhousie Review. Financial constraints, shifting readerships, and competition from institutional funding bodies including the Canada Council for the Arts influenced its trajectory. Publication ceased in 1982 after a run that spanned key debates about Canadian modernism, bilingualism, and regionalism involving contributors connected to McGill University, University of Toronto, Queen's University, and other campuses.

Editorial Staff and Contributors

Editorial leadership included prominent literary figures who balanced roles as editors, critics, and teachers at institutions like University of Toronto, University of British Columbia, and McMaster University. Staff and contributors ranged from poets and novelists to critics and translators: names that appeared in its pages and in parallel venues included Milton Acorn, E.J. Pratt, P.K. Page, Margaret Atwood, Leonard Cohen, Mordecai Richler, Atkinson, Donaldson?, F.R. Scott, Northrop Frye, Marshall McLuhan, George Woodcock, Harold Innis, Earle Birney, Dionne Brand, Tom Marshall, Gwendolyn MacEwen, Michael Ondaatje, Dennis Lee, A.J.M. Smith, Hugh MacLennan, Mavis Gallant, John Metcalf, Raymond Souster, D.G. Jones, Louis Dudek, and Northrop Frye. The Review also published translations and international voices who had associations with journals and presses such as Faber and Faber, Knopf, Chatto & Windus, New Directions Publishing Corporation, and literary movements in the United Kingdom, United States, and Europe, connecting to figures like T.S. Eliot, W.H. Auden, James Joyce, Ezra Pound, Sylvia Plath, Allen Ginsberg, William Carlos Williams, and Harold Bloom in critical discussion.

Content and Themes

The magazine regularly printed poetry, short fiction, literary criticism, book reviews, and essays addressing topics tied to Canadian cultural institutions and intellectual debates. Recurring themes linked to discussions about regionalism (Maritime, Prairie, Ontario, British Columbia) and urban studies involving cities such as Toronto, Montreal, Vancouver, Winnipeg, Halifax, and St. John's, Newfoundland and Labrador. Essays engaged with comparative literature dialogues around figures like T.S. Eliot, Ezra Pound, James Joyce, Marcel Proust, and Samuel Beckett while critics debated theories associated with scholars at Harvard University, Yale University, Oxford University, and Cambridge University. The Review paid attention to Canadian publishing infrastructures—reviewing books from McClelland & Stewart, Oxford University Press (Canada), House of Anansi Press, and Gage Publishing—and it discussed prizes and institutions such as the Governor General's Awards, the Giller Prize precursors, and awards administered by the Canada Council for the Arts. Coverage also touched on translation issues involving francophone and anglophone exchanges connected to figures like Antonine Maillet, Gabrielle Roy, Michel Tremblay, and translators associated with the Association of Canadian Publishers.

Reception and Influence

Critics and scholars have credited the magazine with influencing careers and debates about Canadian literary identity; its pages are cited in studies of postwar Canadian literature and in biographies of authors tied to the Confederation Poets legacy and the modernist turn. Reviewers in outlets such as The Globe and Mail, The Toronto Star, The National Post, and Maclean's noted its role in promoting younger writers and shaping critical taste. University courses at University of Toronto, Queen's University, University of British Columbia, McGill University, and York University have drawn on its archives. Its circulation and editorial stances attracted commentary from institutions like the Canada Council, and scholars of periodicals have compared it with international contemporaries including The New Yorker, The Paris Review, Encounter (magazine), Poetry (magazine), and The Kenyon Review.

Publication Details and Format

Published from Toronto, the Review issued quarterly and irregular special numbers; layout featured contributions in typeset columns, cover art by Canadian illustrators and painters linked to galleries such as the Art Gallery of Ontario and patrons like I.M. Pei’s era collectors. It printed reviews of books released by Canadian and international presses including McClelland & Stewart, Faber and Faber, Chatto & Windus, Knopf, and scholarly titles from Cambridge University Press and Oxford University Press. Production costs, subscription revenues, and grant decisions by bodies like the Canada Council for the Arts and provincial arts councils affected frequency, page count, and eventual cessation in 1982. Archival holdings are held in special collections at institutions such as University of Toronto Libraries, Library and Archives Canada, McGill University Library, and Queen's University Archives.

Category:Literary magazines published in Canada