I’ve been doing a series on “Strange Northerns” because I enjoy supernatural tales set in my home country of Canada. This has led to people asking me questions about Northerns in particular. So here you go, a short overview of one of my favorite sub-genres: the Northern…
Not a Western
The first modern “Western” is considered to be Owen Wister’s The Virginian (1902) and is the prototype of a multitude of magazine, comics, Pulp tales, novels as well as films, radio and TV shows. The “Northern”, being a similar kind of story, set in the north, usually Alaska or Canada, and features such icons as Mounties, dog-sleds, lumberjacks, gold-miners, Native Americans, animals like wolves, bears and caribou, thrived during a similar time period, though this sub-genre never managed to become the massive category of story-telling that claims John Wayne and Louis L’Amour. When most people think of a Northern they usually envision Nelson Eddy and Jeanette MacDonald warbling “When I’m Calling You” in Rose Marie (1936) or Johnny Horton singing “North to Alaska” for the John Wayne film of the same name (1960).
Between the years of 1892-1954 the Northern was popularized by writers like W. A. Fraser, Gilbert Parker, Jack London, Rex Beach and many others who wrote for general subject magazines like Popular Stories and The Argosy. Later Pulps specialized in Northerns. These included North West Stories, North-West Romances and Complete Northwest Novel Magazine with stories by Wm. Byron Mowery, Walter W. Liggett, Anthony M. Rud, Frederick H. Chase, Frederick L. Nebel, Chart Pitt, A. De Herries Smith and Harry Sinclair Drago. The movies gave us The Riders of the Plains (1910), The Flame of the Yukon (1926), Renfrew of the Royal Mounted (1937) Murder on the Yukon (1940) and Pony Soldier (1952) TV and Radio had Sergeant Preston of the Yukon and Renfrew of the Royal Mounted.
Canada’s Literature
Despite the lowest-common-denominator version of the Northern, there is a body of significantly entertaining fiction (especially from the years between the World Wars) that represents an early stage of Canadian fiction not often acknowledged by academics. But to the fan of adventure fiction, Canadian fiction belongs in the Klondyke, on snow-swept prairies or on lonely forest lakes. This article offers up some of the best of the Northern writers (Canadian and otherwise) and the artwork that went along with those great tales. Best of all, most of these works are now in the public domain and fairly easy to find.
The end of the Northern as a viable sub-genre of popular culture begins in the mid-1950s with the category being absorbed by Western films. In literature, the northern setting became part of the mainstream, being more historical than genre based. Occasionally the setting is revived as in the Disney film White Fang (1991) and its sequel. The idea of brave Mounties and rough-and-tumble miners became unpopular as filmmakers and writers examined previous attitudes about Native peoples, authority figures and history in general. The counter-culture of the ’60s and ’70s had no place for the Northern. The Jay Ward-Bill Scott cartoon Dudley Do-Right, based on the early silent film melodramas, poked fun at the entire sub-genre in the late ’50s-early ’60s.
Rebirth
Writers like Farley Mowat have won back some of the mystique of a Canadian setting with Never Cry Wolf (1963) and Lost in the Barrens (1956) which ironically won the Governor General’s Award – an award created by John Buchan, a Northern writer himself . Paul Gross, Canadian filmmaker and actor, took back a little of the Mountie image in the TV show Due South (1990-1994). Even today, writers selectively use the North in new stories, though with a sensitivity to modern issues such as First Nations history, environmental concerns and future use.
Here are the classic writer arranged by their birth dates. Links to public domain etexts are included. Most are from the excellent Thomas Fisher Canadiana Library.
W. A. Fraser (1857-1933)
Born in Nova Scotia but was raised in the US, Fraser worked in oil exploration in Western Canada, Burma and India. He was a friend of Rudyard Kipling. It was Fraser who conceived the idea of the Silver Cross for mothers of soldiers killed in action in WWI. Fraser went onto write 250 stories including the popular Bulldog Carney series that was set in British Columbia during its Cariboo Gold Rush (1858-1865). Fraser was a popular writer of detective stories set both in Canada and New York. In Mooswa and others of the boundaries (1900) and The Outcasts (1910) Fraser writes in the animal genre made popular by Kipling in The Jungle Book.
Mooswa and Others of the Boundaries (1900)
Charles G. D. Roberts (1860-1943)
Roberts has won himself a place in Canadian letters as a poet alongside Archibald Lampman and Bliss Carmen but he also wrote fiction as well. Like Ernest Seton Thompson, he wrote about animals in the wild in realistic terms, not sentimental ones, inspiring later writers like Jack London and Felix Salten’s whose 1923 novel Bambi isn’t a cute little Disney story but a realistic depiction of a deer’s life. The animal story becomes a major sub-section of the Northern.
The Heart of the Ancient Woods (1900)
The Watchers of the Trail (1904)
The Haunters of the Silences (1905)
In the Deep of the Snow (1907)
More Kindred of the Wild (1911)
The Feet of the Furtive (1913)
Jim: The Story of a Backwoods Police Dog (1921)
“Ralph Connor” (Reverend Charles Gordon) (1860-1948)
“Ralph Connor” spent time doing missionary work in the Northwest. His first book Black Rock (1898) was a hit in Canada but his second The Sky Pilot (1899) sold over a million copies and set his reputation.
Black Rock A Tale of the Selkirks (1898)
Corporal Cameron of the Northwest Mounted Police (1912)
The Patrol of the Sun Dance Trail (1914)
Sir Gilbert Parker (1862-1932)
Born in Canada, Parker was a teacher, a lecturer, and finally one of England’s top-selling authors in the UK and the US. He was chosen by the government during WWI to head their propaganda machine to try and lure the US into the war. He was knighted in 1902 for his services to Canadian literature. His book Pierre and his People (1892) was the first book to be written about Canada. His works include many about the French-Canadiens as well as Canadian history:
Susan Carleton Jones (1864-1926)
Carleton Jones was born in Nova Scotia. She wrote for the Pulps under several pseudonyms including S. Carleton, Guy Carleton, Helen Milicente and S. Carleton Jones.
A Girl of the North : A Story of London and Canada (1900)
“The Lame Priest” (Atlantic Monthly, December 1901)
Roger Pocock (1865-1941)
Pocock was a constable for the North-West Mounted Police as well as an officer in the Boer War. He formed the paramilitary Legion of Frontiersmen to help with Britain’s military preparedness in 1905. In 1899-1900 he rode 3600 miles from Fort McLeod, Alberta to Mexico along the infamous ‘Outlaw Trail’, where he met several bandits including Butch Cassidy. He wrote about the experience for Lloyd’s Weekly Newspaper. He also wrote for Argosy and other magazines.
Harold Bindloss (1866-1945)
Bindloss was a popular English novelist who set many of his books in Western Canada where he had farmed for a while. The town of Bindloss, Alberta is named after him.
Lorimer of the NorthWest (1909)
Vane of the Timberlands (1911)
Prescott of Saskatchewan (1913)
Partners of the Out-Trail (1919)
Ridgwell Cullum (1867-1943)
Ridgwell Cullum was the nom de plum of British author Sidney Groves Burghard. Cullum mined gold in South Africa, then in the Yukon. He ranched cattle in Montana for a few years. He wrote about all of these places in his books, beginning with The Devil’s Keg (1903) set in Alberta.
The Hound From the North (1904)
The Triumph of John Kars (1917)
The Man in the Twilight (1922)
Alan Sullivan (1868-1947)
Sullivan was born in Montreal, moved to Chicago as a child and witnessed the Great Fire. Later he worked for the railroad and eventually mined in Western Canada. He was a captain in the RAF during WWI. His poems and stories appeared in the Atlantic Monthly and Harper’s.
The Passing of Oul-i-but, and other tales (1913)
Under The Northern Lights (1928)
Agnes C. Laut (1871-1936)
Laut was a prolific writer of fiction and non-fiction for magazines like The Outing. The Randolph Scott film Cariboo Trail (1950) was not based on Laut’s work.
The Story of the Trapper (1902)
Freebooters of the Wilderness (1910)
H. A. Cody (1872-1948)
Reverend Hiram Alfred Cody, like “Frank Connor”, spent time doing missionary work in the Northwest.
The Frontiersman: A Tale of the Yukon (1910)
The Chief of the Ranges (1913)
Jess of the Rebel Trail (1921)
Robert W. Service (1874-1958)
Service won fame as the poet of the Gold Rush, “The Canadian Kipling” despite the fact that he wasn’t Canadian originally. Born in England and raised in Scotland, he came to the Klondike, not as a miner, but as a bank clerk. The popularity of his writing allowed him to retire from banking. His poems in Songs of a Sourdough (1907) gave us Dan McGrew and Sam McGee, but Service also wrote fiction including The Trail of 98: A Northland Romance (1910).
Arthur Stringer (1874 – 1950)
Stringer was born and raised in Ontario, had a celebrated educational career before writing for newspapers and magazines. He wrote many novels with different settings. A few were set in the North. He has a school named after him in London, Ontario.
The Prairie Wife (1915)
The Prairie Mother (1920)
The Prairie Child (1922)
John Buchan (1st Baron Tweedsmuir) (1875-1940)
It was not uncommon for English gentlemen to be honored in Canada. Lord Bulwer-Lytton (1803-1873) who gave us “It was a dark and stormy night.” was one of these. His name was given to the town of Lytton, BC in honor of being the British Colonial Secretary. John Buchan was also recognized and was appointed Governor General of Canada from 1935 to 1940. (He created the Governor General’s Award or GeeGees to help promote Canadian culture.) Most of Buchan’s tales take place in Scotland or elsewhere but his last works were set in the North: “The Faraway People” (1941) features a lost race of people who pre-date the Inuit and Sick Heart River (1942) follows a terminally ill man to a remote valley in Canada.
Jack London (1876-1916)
Jack London is without doubt the author we most associate with tales of the Klondike, though he wrote many other kinds of stories including Science Fiction and South Sea tales. Most of the adventure fiction that remains, the very best of the Northern legacy, were written at the beginning of London’s career, cut short by illness. London, unlike later writers, actually went to the Yukon on July 12, 1897 at the age of 21 along with his brother-in-law James Shepard. He returned a year later no richer from panning gold but filled with a wealth of story material. His novels Call of the Wild and White Fang helped popularize realistic fiction about animals.
A Daughter of the Snows (1902)
Love of Life and Other Stories (1907)
Hesketh Prichard (1876 – 1922)
Pritchard was a British writer who wrote for markets in the UK and the US. (Along with his widowed mother he created the occult detective Flaxman Low writing as E. and H. Heron) His series of stories collected as November Joe: detective of the woods (1913) features a Canadian backwoods setting that reflected his leisure hours spent hunting and fishing.
Rex Beach (1877-1949)
The “Victor Hugo of the North,” Beach, like Jack London spent time in the North prospecting. After five years without striking it rich he turned to writing about the Gold Rush. His tough guy style was lamented by later critics but his novels though formulaic are filled with accurate details about Alaska and the North. Beach’s works were made into many films. His first novel The Spoilers (1906) was filmed five times, starring Gary Cooper in the fourth (1942) and John Wayne in the last (1955).
The Crimson Gardenia and Other Tales of Adventure (1916)
Laughing Bill Hyde and Other Stories (1917)
Theodore Goodridge Roberts (1877-1953)
This younger brother of Charles G. D. Roberts was a newspaper man. In that line of work he went to Cuba to cover the Spanish-American War and contracted malaria. After recovering, he went off to Newfoundland and then Brazil. He served Canada in World War I. His last great adventure was to sail from Panama to Vancouver. After this he learned what real hardship was when he tried to publish magazines in Canada.
Brothers of Peril: A Story of Old Newfoundland (1905)
Rayton: a backwoods mystery (1912)
James Oliver Curwood (1878-1927)
Curwood was an American writer and conservationist. A trip to Canada in 1909 inspired a series of stories that gave him enough money to explore the Yukon and Alaska, fodder for his 30+ novels. An avid hunter in his youth, he became a proponent of conservation in mid-life. Curwood was commissioned to write about Canada by the Canadian government as a way of popularizing the country. Curwood spent much of his money on his home, a castle-like chateau in Owosso, Michigan known as Curwood Castle.
The Courage of Captain Plum (1908)
The Honor of the Big Snows (1911)
Steele of the Royal Mounted (1911)
God’s Country and the Woman (1915)
The Courage of Marge O’Doone (1918)
Back to God’s Country and Other Stories (1920)
The Valley of the Silent Men (1920)
Hulbert Footner (1879-1944)
Footner was a Canadian writer who started out to be an actor in New York. His first writing was about travels along the Hudson River, then he wrote about the Northwest Territory and along the Peace, Hay and Fraser Rivers. In his later career he turned to detective fiction creating the popular Madame Storey series.
New Rivers of the North (1912)
James B. Hendryx (1880-1963)
Hendryx was a pulp writer who specialized in Westerns and Northerns. His father owned a newspaper in Minnesota. He later made his home in Michigan. Some of his Westerns were made into films in the silent picture days.
Connie Morgan with the Mounted (1918)
Connie Morgan in Fur Country (1921)
North (aka The Challenge of the North) (1923)
At the Foot of the Rainbow (1924)
Bertrand W. Sinclair (1881-1972)
A Scotsman who came to America as a boy, Sinclair grew up in Montana before immigrating to British Columbia where he made his final home. He wrote about Vancouver and its surrounding area.
Raw Gold (1907)
North of Fifty-Three (1914)
Big Timber (1916)
By no means is this all the Northerns there are (literally hundreds I haven’t mentioned) but this is a good place to start. Many of the authors who come next are Pulpsters exclusively.