Brooding and Homing

House, I have gone to bed in your attic crying with smart and hurt as though I had been a hen under whose wing hornets had built their nest and stung me every time I quivered a feather. House, I have slept too in your attic, serene as a brooding dove.

The Indian eagles painted on the underside of the roof’s shingles brooded over my head, as I brooded over the House of All Sorts. Three separate sets of souls beside my own it housed, souls for whose material comfort I was responsible.

Every hen loosens up her feathers to brood over what she has hatched. Often the domestic hen is badly fooled, finds herself mothering goslings, ducks or guineafowl instead of good, ordinary chickens. Only the hen who “steals her nest away” can be sure whose eggs she is sitting on.

The House of All Sorts seemed to get more goslings and guinea-fowl than plain chickens. I tried to be a square old hen, but the mincing guineas and the gawky goslings tried me. The guineas peeped complainingly, the goslings waddled into all the puddles and came back to chill my skin. In no time too they outgrew my brooding squat, hoisting me clear off my feet.

You taught me, old House, that every bird wants some of her own feathers in the lining of her nest.

At first I tried to make my suites into complete homes–arranged everything as I would like it myself–but people changed it all round, discarded, substituted. It is best in a House of All Sorts to provide the necessary only and leave each woman to do her own homing.

Klee Wyck

Emily Carr wrote these twenty-one sketches after visiting and living with Native people, painting their totem poles and villages, many of them in wild and remote areas. She tells her stories with beauty, pathos and a vivid awareness of the comedy of people and situations.

The Book of Small

Emily Carr wrote these thirty-six sketches that relate anecdotes about her life as a young girl in the frontier town of Victoria. She notes: “There were a great many things that I only half understood, such as saloons and the Royal Family and the Chain Gang.”

The House of All Sorts

Emilly Carr wrote these forty-one stories of those hard-working days as landlord and the parade of tenants — young couples, widows, sad bachelors and rent evaders. In an additional twenty-five stories, she describes the mutual bonds of affection between her and her dogs.

Growing Pains

Completed just before Emily Carr died in 1945, Growing Pains tells the story of her life, beginning with her girlhood in pioneer Victoria and going on to her training as an artist in San Francisco, England and France. She writes about the frustration she felt at the rejection of her art by Canadians, of the years of despair when she stopped painting and of the unexpected vindication and triumph she felt when the Group of Seven accepted her as one of them.

Heart of a Peacock

A collection of 51 short stories by the legendary writer and painter Emily Carr, arranged in themes such as her experiences with Native people, her adventures with various beloved creatures and her love of nature. Together, they underline Carr’s place as a writer with the sharp yet tender eye of an artist, with a deep feeling for the tragedies of life and with a rich sense of the comic.

Pause

While studying art in London, Emily Carr seriously undermined her health and was sent to a sanatorium for a complete rest cure. Bridling at the hospital’s rules, which prohibited excitement of any kind, the always rebellious Carr proceeded to make friends, raise birds, and cause trouble. In words and enchanting sketches, in Pause: A Sketchbook, Carr presents a funny, poignant account of her 18-month convalescence,

Hundreds and Thousands

Hundreds and Thousands consists of her journals from 1927 to 1941. She began keeping a journal in 1927, when, after years of her work being derided and ignored, came unexpected vindication and triumph when the Group of Seven accepted her as one of them and encouraged her to overcome the years of despair when she stopped painting.

Opposite Contraries

Collected from Emily Carr’s private and public writings and edited by Susan Crean, these previously unpublished pieces reveal the outspoken artist at her most forthright. Expurgated sections from Carr’s journals detail her anguished meditations on her spiritual mission, musings about Native culture and the white community’s reaction to it, and thoughts about her family. Her groundbreaking 1913 "Lecture on Totems”, her first recorded writing on Native art and people, is also included, as are some of her most fascinating letters to friends and colleagues.

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