Carol Shields

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Standard Name: Shields, Carol
Birth Name: Carol Ann Warner
CS , an American-born Canadian novelist of the twentieth century, a low-key but passionate feminist, published a collection of poetry as her first book. Her earliest novel features as minor character a novelist whose stock-in-trade is to be Canadian but who is by birth (secretly) an American. Her novels probe the freight of meaning in the small change of ordinary lives, especially those of women, and the way that an ordinary person becomes an artist. They delight in self-reflexiveness, and combine self-conscious artistry with a disarming appearance of transcription from life. CS also wrote short fiction and plays.
Colour photo of Carolyn Shields taken outside at her home in Victoria, Canada, 1995. Shot from below, she looks off-camera, wears a red tartan scarf draped over her right shoulder, and is framed by tree branches overhead in a light blue, near-night sky.

Connections

Connections Author name Excerpt
Theme or Topic Treated in Text Penelope Fitzgerald
It includes Fitzgerald's comments on works by Jane Austen , George Eliot , Margaret Oliphant , Barbara Pym , Carol Shields , and Amy Tan , as well as on a number of recent literary...
Textual Production Deborah Levy
DL has also written dramatic adaptations for BBC radio of others' work: of Chance Acquaintances by Colette , of Unless by Carol Shields , and of Blood Wedding by Federico Garcia Lorca , the last...
Textual Production Penelope Lively
PL has published introductions to works by other writers including Ivy Compton-Burnett , Edith Wharton , Willa Cather , and Carol Shields . In September 2015 she reviewed Alison Light 's Common People: In Pursuit...
Textual Production Claire Luckham
CL 's musical adaptation of Defoe 's novel Moll Flanders was staged in 1986. More recently she has performed a valuable service by providing the catalyst for the delivery to radio audiences of much women's...
Textual Features Susanna Moodie
Another personal narrative, but with less of the autobiographical in it than its predecessor, this book takes its structure from the succession of places passed through and people met on a recent trip to Niagara...
Textual Features Susanna Moodie
The eponymous leading personage is the unmitigated consummation of evil, but a couple of other bad characters have redeeming features.
Shields, Carol. Susanna Moodie: Voice and Vision. Borealis Press.
17
Carol Shields renders with a diagram the elaborate pairing and contrasting of characters good...
Textual Features Susanna Moodie
Carol Shields noted that several details in this book are lifted from life, that psychological causes are often suggested for characters' personal aberrations, and that Moodie has become capable of more complex characterization.
Shields, Carol. Susanna Moodie: Voice and Vision. Borealis Press.
23, 71
Textual Features Alice Munro
Most exotic and improbable of all is The Albanian Virgin (based on an actual experience, about 1900, of a librarian from Clinton, Ontario),
Thacker, Robert. Alice Munro. McClelland and Stewart.
445
which makes use of the ancient tradition, in a tribal society...
Author summary Susanna Moodie
SM is best remembered for her first-person narrative of pioneer life in Canada, Roughing It in the Bush, 1852, considered a foundational work of Canadian literature. She was a prolific author who wrote...
Literary responses Susanna Moodie
Hugh Latimer was particularly successful, and went through several editions and a sequel.
Peterman, Michael. Susanna Moodie: A Life. ECW Press.
32
OCLC WorldCat. http://www.oclc.org/firstsearch/content/worldcat/. Accessed 1999.
To Carol Shields , The Little Prisoner and others like it are epics tinged with sadism.
Shields, Carol. Susanna Moodie: Voice and Vision. Borealis Press.
70
Literary responses Susanna Moodie
Carol Shields judged this a more mature and civilized book than Roughing It in the Bush, less vivid but more reflective, and interesting in its portrayal of its author as having learned to accept...
Literary responses Sara Jeannette Duncan
Canadian reviewers were cool about the book. It provoked the Globe, for example, to write as if its entire readership were male: [e]ven when our sisters and wives make a conscious effort to compass...
Literary responses Susanna Moodie
Carol Shields in her monograph on SM offered a fairly stern judgement of her literary quality. Being paid by the page, said Shields, Moodie pads her work. Her straightforward expository style alternates with florid lyricism...
Literary responses Alice Munro
This was chosen as one of the year's best books by the New York Times Book Review.
“Contemporary Authors”. Gale Databases: Literature Resource Centre-LRC.
Carol Shields brought a long perspective on AM 's work to her notice in the London Review...
Literary responses Deborah Levy
Hot Milk was listed as one of the New York Times' 100 most notable books of 2016. Columnist Mariella Frostrup called it mesmerising and slightly hallucinogenic . . . . I haven't admired a...

Timeline

25 May 1995: Naim Attallah, proprietor of the Women's...

Writing climate item

25 May 1995

Naim Attallah , proprietor of the Women's Press, published his first novel, entitled A Timeless Passion. Like all his other works, it was later asserted to be actually ghost-written, every word, by his employee Jennie Erdal .

22 October 2002: The Booker Prize was awarded for the first...

Writing climate item

22 October 2002

The Booker Prize was awarded for the first time as the Man Booker Prize, its sponsorship having passed to the Man Group , a Canadian venture capital company.

Texts

Shields, Carol, and Blanche Howard. A Celibate Season. Coteau Books, 1991.
Shields, Carol. A Fairly Conventional Woman. Macmillan of Canada, 1982.
Shields, Carol. Coming to Canada: Poems. Carleton University Press, 1992.
Shields, Carol. Departures and Arrivals. Blizzard Pub., 1990.
Shields, Carol. Dressing Up for the Carnival. Random House Canada, 2000.
Shields, Carol, and Marjorie Anderson, editors. Dropped Threads: what we aren’t told. Vintage Canada, 2001.
Shields, Carol, and Catherine Shields. Fashion, Power, Guilt, and the Charity of Families. Blizzard Pub., 1993.
Shields, Carol. Happenstance: A Novel. McGraw-Hill, Ryerson, 1980.
Shields, Carol. “Introduction”. Coming to Canada: Poems, edited by Christopher Levenson, Carleton University Press, 1998, p. xi - xxv.
Shields, Carol. Jane Austen. Viking, 2001.
Shields, Carol. Larry’s Party. Random House Canada, 1997.
Shields, Carol. Others. Borealis Press, 1972.
Shields, Carol. “Rereadings: Beautiful youth”. The Guardian, p. G2: 29.
Shields, Carol. Small Ceremonies. McGraw-Hill, Ryerson, 1976.
Shields, Carol. Susanna Moodie: Voice and Vision. Borealis Press, 1977.
Shields, Carol. Swann: A Mystery. Stoddart, 1987.
Shields, Carol. Swann: A Mystery. Vintage Canada, 1995.
Shields, Carol. The Box Garden. McGraw-Hill Ryerson, 1977.
Shields, Carol. The Collected Stories. Vintage, 2005.
Shields, Carol. The Orange Fish. Random House, 1989.
Shields, Carol. The Republic of Love. Random House of Canada, 1992.
Shields, Carol. The Stone Diaries. Vintage Books, 1993.
Shields, Carol. Thirteen Hands: a play in two acts. Blizzard Publishing, 1993.
Shields, Carol. Unless: a novel. Random House Canada, 2002.
Shields, Carol. Various Miracles. Stoddart, 1985.