Summer Research: The Children's Literature of Brunswick Press

Every summer I travel from Kansas City, MO to Saint John, New Brunswick (Canada) to visit my family.  But this summer,  I am going there to do some research as well.  Courtesy of its fellowship, I will spend time in the Eileen Wallace Children's Literature collection at the University of New Brunswick to learn more about the children's books published by University Press of New Brunswick.

University Press of New Brunswick aka Brunswick Press aka University Press was located in Fredericton, NB and was active for three decades, from the early 1950s to the early 1980s. The press primarily had a regional mandate: to promote the Maritimes through its monthly magazine The Atlantic Advocate and the original books it published. Overall, the press produced approximately sixty titles for children. These books span a wide variety of genres including stories, verses, folklore, history, and so on. Some of them promote the Atlantic region, but many of them do not. One of the questions I'm pondering is how the goals of regionalism conflict with the goals typically associated with children's literature and childhood reading. I also suspect some of the goals (of regionalism, of nationalism, of children's literature) change between the 1950s and 1970s.

The only history of Brunswick Press is an entry in the New Brunswick Literary Encyclopedia, so there is much to learn. Besides spending time with the books, some of my research will include digging into archives -- reading the correspondence of the press's editor, Brigadier Michael Wardell.

Overall, I'm excited. I grew up in New Brunswick and so I'm interested in learning more about how this press might have contributed to shaping reading and literature for children in the province.